Godzilla vs the Zillas
by GodzillaGuy92
Summary: When the world, weakened by the recent Xilian invasion, is threatened by the next generation of Zillas, who will fight? This is my first story, so please read and review! Disclaimer: I don't own Godzilla, but neither do you, so don't laugh. COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

**Godzilla vs. The Zillas**

By GodzillaGuy

**Chapter 1**

_1998._

The air inside was thick with smoke, owing to the fact that everything that was physically able to be set on fire was doing so. The weaker walls had crumbled, and the more durable ones could go any second. In several of the lower places of the floor, there were large, gaping holes that led all the way to the New York subway. Sparks shot out from any random place every so often for no apparent reason. Lights flickered on and off, giving it an even more eerie atmosphere than if it was just dark. And the ceiling… well, there _was_ no ceiling. In short, the building was a wreck.

This was Madison Square Garden.

When GINO nested in the Garden, its instincts told him when that when he was almost done laying his clutch to lay one individual egg in a separate place than the main nest. He crawled back down the subway tunnel that he used to find his way into the Garden, crawled further down it, burrowed down a bit in the middle of it, and laid the second egg. Because the egg was separate from the others, it wouldn't hatch until they heard some sort of other noise or simply waited long enough, whereas all the eggs in the main nest would hatch at the same time, awakened by the sound of... well, each other.

Or at least, that's what was _supposed_ to happen.

In actuality, when all of the other eggs were hatching, one egg stayed dormant. This is a phenomenon sometimes noticed in other egg-laying animals; while all of the eggs of, for example, a duck, are supposed to hatch together, on rare occasions for reasons scientists don't yet know, one of them may lag behind for as short as a minute to as long as six hours. And, in an even bigger coincidence, the egg survived the explosion caused by the F-15s' missiles when they were ordered to blow up the building.

And so the egg and the small abomination inside it slept as the other two hundred twenty-seven eggs in Madison Square Garden hatched. The snoozing creature in the second egg stayed in that condition as the Garden was demolished by the F-15 bomber planes. Neither egg was disturbed when their father was slaughtered at the Brooklyn Bridge, even as the millions of true Godzilla fans around the world cheered and about three or four people wept for the fraud's memory.

But though the eggs were meant to hatch after the main batch, they still had to hatch sometime.

Suddenly, the egg in the Garden began to rattle, rocking back and forth as the lifeform inside struggled for freedom. A large crack split along the egg's length. A hideous head then thrusted its way forth into the world, solidifying its existence with a high pitched roar that ripped through the air like someone scratching the strings of a contrabass. The head was shortly followed by the rest of the creature's bipedal, lizard-like body. As slime from the egg dripped from the infant's form, it deeply sniffed the air the same way a hound dog does when on the hunt. The baby's smell was incredibly keen, keen enough to notice that in contrast to the thick stuffiness of the air around it, the newborn could smell the coolness of the air outside the burning building. Even better, it caught a whiff of… could it be? ...yes, there was no mistaking the fragrance.

The creature strode forwards with alien-like purpose. It was an animal of instinct, never considering resisting those impulses. Its mind screamed one command, one word:

_Food._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_My life sucks,_ reflected Austin Huff miserably as he trudged into his apartment building.

In the entire crisis with Godzilla, Austin had been a special case. He _wanted_ Manhattan to stay evacuated. After all, if Austin was forced out of the apartment, he didn't have to pay his rent! Now everything was back to normal, and Austin would know that soon something would happen concerning his depts.

Austin had even lost his only real friend, Leap. He had named his dog Leap because he would always leap onto Austin excitedly when he came back from his lousy job of packing fish from the harbor everyday. Austin's days were tedious, it was true, but this was possibly the only part of the whole tedious cycle that he enjoyed. Needless to say, he always had to make sure no one was watching before he ever went in; dogs above six pounds weren't allowed.

Now Leap was gone too. As the crowd of people had swept back into New York, he and Leap became separated in the torrent. When most people lost their dogs, they posted pictures on every telephone pole, every tree they could find with an address of its owner and a reward for finding it. But a job of packaging fish didn't pay well. Austin had neither a computer nor a digital camera to take pictures of Leap and print out flyers. Even if he did, someone would doubtlessly notice if somebody brought back Leap, or worse; his landlord might actually come upon one of the flyers and Austin would be evicted before he could say, "Dean Devlin sucks even worse than my life."

Austin's only hope was that somehow, miraculously, Leap would find his way home. In the meantime, he would just have to force himself to keep going.

He left the door open like he always did. Hey, it was cheaper than AC. And now, the door served a double purpose, if only a half-hearted one. It would also let Leap get inside the apartment in the event that he actually found his way back. He threw his coat in the alcove next to the door out of habit; Leap always used his coat as a blanket. He plopped down on the couch to at least get a little rest.

As he closed his eyes, Austin thought he heard soft footfalls near his door. He opened his eyes and turned to the door, but nothing was there. _Probably just the guy in the apartment above me,_ he reasoned. However, he presently couldn't shake off the nervous feeling that the noise had come from his own apartment. He wearily stood up and made his way toward the door.

It happened all at once. No sooner had Austin reached the door, decided that there was nothing there, and turned around than a large shape sprang out of the alcove from underneath the coat. Austin's one feeble, optimistic thought was, _Leap?_ Then the figure hit him.

The force of the collision knocked Austin flat on his back, with that _thing_ on top. As he looked up at it, he reasoned that the whatever-it-was measured about eight or nine feet tall. That was as far as his observations could go, however, because the thing suddenly lunged downwards and bit him on the shoulder.

The pain made everything go blindingly white, for some reason. Austin both heard and felt his shoulder blade snap, accompanied by a long-lingering flash of even more pain. A feeling of warm stickiness materialized onto his chest and upper arms, and Austin realized in horror that it was his own blood. He felt the pair of jaws retreat from his wound and close around his neck. Though Austin knew he was about to die, in his final few moments he felt no pain, only hope that dogs could somehow go to heaven so that he might someday see his only friend again.

Then the jaws clamped shut, bringing to a gruesome end both Austin's existence on this earth and Chapter Two of this story.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

And so the baby escaped from New York with a full stomach and the humans none the wiser. It could swim proportionately as well as its father, so it took no trouble for it to swim all the way down to the Panama Canal and through to the Pacific Ocean in a rather short amount of time. Eventually, it found a home at an uninhabited, unnamed island right in the middle of it.

The environment was perfect for the infant in every way. Dozens and dozens of species of fish would yearly visit the coral reefs that surrounded the island. In fact, there were so many species that used this spot that it was almost always mating season for one type of fish or another. Even when it wasn't, there was still more than enough to satisfy the baby's hunger whenever it wished. As a result, in three weeks it grew a full 30 meters larger than its father, giving it an impressive height (even for a kaiju) of 90 meters.

By the time it reached that size, it was a fully grown adult and had already laid his first clutch of eggs. There were exactly three hundred forty-four eggs in this batch; inside every one, a tiny fraud was developing. Other than being a little more careful where he stepped, the monster was, for a long time, at least, completely unaffected by their presence.

One fateful day, though, instinct pulled the creature toward the ocean when he wasn't hungry. Nature commanded him to find food. But this food was not for himself; he had to gather food for his as-yet-unborn children. This time, because he needed to collect even more food than he needed to sustain his massive 90 meter body, he had to venture farther from his island than usual.

The principle of how much food was needed is simple multiplication. To provide food for three hundred forty-four 3 meter creatures, one would need the same amount of food to feed a creature as big as all of them combined, a size unprecedented in history, even for a kaiju, of 1,032 meters. This meant that the monster would have to collect enough fish to feed approximately twelve other adult creatures his size.

Needless to say, he would definitely have to be making more than one trip.

* * *

"How much longer is this going to take?" said X with the exact impatient air of a young child sitting in the back seat of a minivan on their way to Florida for vacation. 

"I don't know," replied the Controller with an equal amount of impatience imminent in his own voice.

"We just have to find one more monster. It shouldn't be taking two weeks," continued X.

"Okay," said the Controller through gritted teeth.

The Xilian ship floated through the sky, faster than any Earth jet but smoother than walking up an escalator. Its stealth field was activated at the moment so that there was no chance of the humans spotting them, either through sight or any type of radar. The time had not yet come for that. As such, not a human on Earth ever detected the presence of the gigantic, egg-like craft unless the Xilians designed for it to be that way.

X had reason to be impatient. For fourteen of those ridiculously long Earth days, they had been searching the globe for just one more monster. Anguirus, Ebirah, King Caesar, Rodan, Kamacuras, Hedorah, and Kumonga had already been collected and modified, Gigan was already on Earth waiting to be awoken, and Monster X had been loaded into Gorath already. They just needed one more monster to start their attack.

What for?! Seven monsters, nine if they needed it, was plenty! They should start the attack right now! Still, X didn't know precisely what was going to happen once they had all of the required monsters. Presumably, of course, they would attack the Earth with them, targeting the humans' major cities first, but the Controller had never explicitly described to him what would happen, and his decisions were sometimes odd.

X's train of thought was suddenly interrupted by the Controller saying the two most beautiful words X had heard in two weeks:

"Monster sighted."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

The monster in question was completely unaware of the aliens' plans for taking over the Earth. But he was aware that when before his view as he was fishing for a school of tuna had been crystal clear, it was now rather obscured by a gigantic metal box that dropped over him and automatically closed its one open side as soon as it had done so.

The creature bellowed in rage, furiously clawing, biting, and tail-whipping the sides of his prison. He even did something purely out of instinct that he had never done in his life, mostly because he had never been in a situation where he had needed to; he expelled a blast of fire from his mouth. He stopped for a moment, confused. He had never been able (or so he thought) to do that before. He tried it again. It worked! If the monster was able to think in words, he would have thought, _Wow, that was awesome!_

Still, the novelty of discovering his new ability was limited in amount, and he was soon head-butting, body-slamming, and fire-blasting the box with just as much ferocity as before.

* * *

X liked this one. 

The creature ramming its body against the transparent metal terrarium was nothing short of a work of art. Its two-legged body was sleek and hunched close to the ground. The legs themselves were large and muscular, perfect for running fast. The arms were very much comparable to the legs, long and flexible. Its tail made up a full half of its massive length. Its neck was somewhat long and had a decorative flap of skin hanging at the bottom. The head was fearsome, the mouth and jaws making up most of its size as glittering teeth lined the inside of the top and bottom halves and a circular design connected the lower jaw to the rest of the head. Looking into its eyes would have made even an optical surgeon shiver, a mixture of red, orange, and yellow throughout with a pupil so dark in contrast it seemed to be sucking in the rest of the eye like a black hole. To top it all off, three rows of triangular spines ran along its back and pointed forward menacingly.

Overall, it was definitely the coolest looking of the monsters that they had collected.

"This one looks promising," said X with satisfaction evident in his voice.

"Outer appearance is no indication of one's inner strength," said the Controller, folding his arms. Despite this, though, X could tell that he liked the look of this one too.

"We won't really know how powerful this one is until we test it," the Xilian Leader continued. He called to the technician stationed at the control panel on the other side of the room, "Commence combat simulation." The technician nodded and started punching in buttons in on his keyboard.

"In the meantime, what do you think we should call this monster?" the Controller asked X. X thought for a couple seconds, his eyes widened, and he snapped his fingers.

"Zilla."

"Hmm….. I like it," said the Controller in approval.

A large hole (though not large enough for Zilla to crawl through) had been opening in the floor of the kaiju-sized terrarium for the last few seconds. By now it was completely open, and Zilla stopped attacking the walls to look at it curiously.

A 20 meter droid rose out of the opening. Its silver body was column-like, with laser gun turrets and buzz saws jutting out every once in a while at odd angles. Near the top, four red optical receivers encircled the head's circumference. Overall, it looked a something like an oversized model that one might see while at a modern art museum.

Zilla walked forward cautiously, stopping every few steps to sniff the air doubtfully. The two Xilian leaders observed the proceedings with interest.

Zilla was now within ten meters of the droid. Suddenly, the buzz saw closest to him began to spin. Zilla jumped back a full eighty meters.

"This one's a good jumper," remarked the Controller.

X, however, was far from satisfied. "He jumped back," he said with a sort of negative awe in his voice.

Zilla was now eying the simulator droid with - what was that emotion on its reptilian features? Was that nervousness? Even _fear_? As it did so, one of the laser gun turrets began to glow a dull red. It increased in intensity for about two seconds, then shot out a fine, crimson laser beam. Zilla jumped to the side, but not before the ray skimmed his forearm.

Zilla howled his high-pitched contrabass roar in pain as thick blood the same color as the laser beam oozed out of the wound. He spun around and ran full speed - an impressive 500 kilometers per hour - away from the droid. When he hit the wall, he clawed at it, no longer out of bestiality, but pure fear as the droid slowly retreated through the floor.

The word "incredulous" does not do the expression on X's face justice. _"He ran away!"_ he cried. _"None of the other monsters ran away, not even **Hedorah**, and he was the weakest one! No monster backs away from a challenge without at least fighting first! And did you see how easily he was hurt by that beam?! **That was practically the lowest power setting**! **Kamacuras** was less sensitive! **WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD?!**"_

The Controller stayed as calm as ever. "Hold on," he said. "When we finish the genetic modifications, Zilla will be under our control, and he won't have a choice whether to attack the city or not."

"But what about his physical weakness?" inquired X, still fuming.

"That won't be an issue," said the Controller offhandedly. How would that not be an issue? The monsters were there to destroy the cities and be able to stand up against the human military at the same time - right? X waited for further explanation, but received none.

"Now," the Controller continued, "we need to start the modifications so that he will obey us and we can carry him around in the Transporters instead of that obsolete box. Then we can go home until the minor details of the invasion are all straightened out."

In spite of himself, X silently agreed to both. He had never bothered to learn all about the technical details of how they worked, but the Monster Transporters could only pick up and store things that contained M-Base. He would be relieved once they were able to do that; in one nasty incident in particular, Anguirus had actually managed to break out of the box. Luckily, they were able to secure him before he did any major damage to the ship. It was possible that Zilla could escape too, so the sooner the better.

Still, he couldn't help thinking, _I have a bad feeling about this _as he watched the monster eat a few of those swimming animals - err,"tuna," that was it - that had been caught in the box with it.

If the ship had been visible, it would have glowed faintly before it jumped into hyperspace, taking its kaiju cargo with it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

_2004._

X watched the screen in front of him patiently. He observed Godzilla following the few remaining humans' airship as it flew over - what city was this? X could only tell these Earth major cities apart by a few distinct structures. This one had a hideous building next to the water that looked a lot like several fish heads eating each other. So, what was this one called? Canberra? Or was it Sydney? He mentally shrugged. It didn't matter, anyway.

X allowed himself a smile.

"Godzilla… show me what you've got," he said to himself.

There was a Monster Transporter already stationed at the city, hovering overhead like the claw of some giant creature ready to slash its prey. The tip of it glowed and a beam of silver light shot downward and widened when it hit the ground. At the center of this light, something slowly materialized, spinning around rapidly. Presently the thing became clearer as it stopped spinning, revealing itself to be the same monster captured in the middle of the Pacific Ocean all those years ago.

As you have by now guessed, it was Zilla. Godzilla growled as it walked forward confidently, keeping its eye on its streamlined counterpart. Zilla roared in challenge. Godzilla roared too, but a different kind of roar. Miraculously, it actually sounded _bored._

Whoever was controlling the mutant lizard obviously thought so, too. The monster threw back its head in another roar and charged. Godzilla's dorsal fins and mouth glowed pale blue, betraying the blast of radioactive plasma that blasted from its jaws a half-second later.

Zilla leaped through the air just before the beam hit it, dodging it by only a few meters. Its body sailed directly towards Godzilla, claws first. Godzilla spun around 180 degrees. Timing it perfectly, his tail swung sideways and smacked Zilla in midair. A loud, pained screech and bellow filled the air as Zilla flew in the same direction as Godzilla's tail before landing on the ugly fish-headed construction, turning it into a smoking pile of rubble.

Without the slightest hesitation, the King of the Monsters reared back its head as its maw and spines glowed blue a second time. Two seconds later, his heat beam shot forward at the ex-building. One last bellow from the ensuing explosion testified to the end of the pretender of the throne's false reign.

X screamed in anger. The whole battle had only lasted 45 seconds! **_45!_** He jumped up and down and screamed each time his feet hit the floor in the same manner a spoiled little kid might do if his mother said that he could not have a certain new toy.

After a few seconds, he calmed down.

"I knew that tuna-eating monster was useless," he said. He looked up and snapped his fingers.

"Next."

And so ends the life of Zilla, but not this story.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Back at Zilla's former home, the batch of eggs rested peacefully. As horrible as the species was compared to other kaiju (particularly Godzilla), they were still amazing specimens. The eggs had been waiting for their father to bring them a satisfactory amount of food before they hatched. However, if you recall, Zilla had been hunting for food for them when he was captured by the Xilians, so food never arrived.

Without food, the babies in the eggs entered a state of suspended animation in hopes that nourishment would come. Needless to say, it didn't, not for six years.

But the babies were still babies, after all, and had a certain amount of limitation. And the time for them that they could remain in suspended animation had just run out.

If someone was on the island, they would have heard… certain sounds coming from one of the eight-foot eggs. Wet, slimy sounds. Like something inside was writhing around to try to break free and live.

Next, they would have seen the egg wiggle slightly. Then harder, and harder, until-

_Crack._

A scaly head thrust its way forth out of the eggshell and screeched in hunger. Next came its powerful tail, whipping back and forth to crack open as much of the shell as possible. The head swung back and forth to free itself from its prison. Two hands with claw-tipped fingers grabbed the sides of this opening and fiercely tore open the rest of the egg, allowing the nine foot body to jump out and scream to the stars.

And the same thing happened with all the rest of the eggs, one after another with terrible urgency. Within five minutes, all of the other three hundred forty-three eggs had followed suit. They had waited six years for this moment to come, and it was finally here.

The starving kaiju infants looked toward the sea. Out there was a whole other world. The miniature Zillas drooled and licked their lips with anticipation, if the emotion of anticipation was possible for the third generation of a species of mutant iguana, as they gathered around the cliffside bordering the ocean.

Animals' brains do not think in words. After all, how could they? Animals can't talk. It is simply not possible to describe how they think, because human beings are so used to listening to themselves speak that they have all forgotten what it was like when they didn't know how to talk either. But if they did, the thoughts of the baby Zillas would roughly say, _If the world's so big, then we better get started._

As if on cue, all of the baby Zillas leapt into the water head first, arms and legs at their sides. For a full thirty seconds, there was a torrent of scaly flesh and muscle plunging into the cascading water below. Then, just as suddenly as it had began, it ceased as the last infant disappeared into the waves.

Underwater, the brood had become an unruly force of pure hunger as fish after fish was snatched by a powerful set of jaws to its doom. The Zillas all swam around like a ravenous pack of reef sharks, darting into schools of fish with mouths open wide. The fish tried to evade with each run, but with every attack there were always those that just weren't fast enough. Within five minutes, over 10,000 fish had met their untimely demise at the hands (or, rather, the teeth) of the famished kaiju infants.

And so the babies' hunger was satisfied… for the moment. But nothing lasts forever. Appetites would return. Rage would be replenished.

And babies would grow.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Sure, the office was pretty small, but it was still bigger than most other peoples'. The floors were uncarpeted, made of black marble. On the walls were several framed pictures of one smiling mustached man in the middle of many other people wearing black uniforms with various warships in the backgrounds. Paperwork was strewn across the top of the desk sitting in the room's center untidily, along with a lamp, an empty Coke bottle, a boxing glove, a small clock, a kazoo, three candy wrappers, a weight, a yoyo, one lone key, an American dime, a half eaten sandwich, and a pistol.

Captain Gordon sat behind his desk in weary thought.

Ever since the Xilian invasion, there had been absolutely nothing to do. Barely any new kaiju had appeared, and even if there had been another sudden swarm of them on Japan, he _still_ wouldn't have anything to do because the _Gotengo_ wasn't repaired yet. He almost wished - strike that, he _did _wish - that HEAT hadn't lent a hand in disposing of them and they had all been allowed to run amok until the _Gotengo_ was complete so that he could kill them then.

All he ever got was paperwork these days. No assignments, no simulations, no target practice, not even a single freakin' drill. Just paperwork. Working out in his spare time helped some, but Captain Gordon was fighting a losing battle against pure boredom.

_Well,_ he thought, _at least this won't last much longer._ This, fortunately, was true. The _Gotengo_ was at 93.67 percent working capacity, and getting higher every day.

Until then, though, he and the rest of the Earth Defense Force were just going to have to wait it out. Day after day, week after-

**BLEEP! BLEEP!** Captain Gordon jumped. The red emergency lights were spinning and the alarm was screaming at a volume of approximately eighty decimals. None of this registered to him, however. If the alarms were going off, there had to be trouble.

And Captain Gordon lived for trouble.

* * *

Alarms blaring on all sides, Ozaki sprinted down the corridor as fast as he could, which was considerable, owing to the fact that he was a mutant. After two months of absolutely no action, it felt good to finally be headed toward the EDF Planetary Surveillance Room. Not to mention that maybe, _just_maybe, he would beat Captain Gordon this time.

His feet skidded slightly as he rounded the corner to find the janitor and his equipment blocking the hallway six inches in front of him. Ozaki automatically did a backflip clear over him, landed six feet away, and continued running. The whole stunt had required no thought, and he didn't lose any speed performing it. Everything was automatic.

"Showoff," he heard the janitor grumble to himself as he turned another corner.

Ozaki could see the doorway now. This was it. He would beat Captain Gordon there this time. He could _feel_ it. And it felt good, dang it. The doorway moved closer, and closer, until-

Ozaki ran into the room and immediately looked right and left. There was no sign of Captain Gordon. A big smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, which he made absolutely no effort to contain. Finally, he had beat Captain Gordon to the Surveillance Room!

A rough, familiar chuckle coming from behind him sent all of his joy crashing down. Slowly, he turned around to find a muscular American man with a thick, black mustache leaning against the wall with a large grin spread over his features.

"Nice try, kid," said Captain Gordon

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Ozaki cried. Everyone in the room stared at him, but he didn't care. After he was done, he looked back to Captain Gordon. "How do you always do that?" he demanded.

"I have my ways," said the captain dismissively. "Why do you suddenly care so much? Or, at least, more than usual?"

"I don't know. It's probably just that we haven't had anything to do in so long. I've been bored."

Captain Gordon smiled again. "I know what you mean," he said. "But, hey, that's all over now, isn't it?"

Despite himself, Ozaki smiled slightly. "I guess so," he replied. Captain Gordon walked past him. Still, Ozaki spun around and punched a large chunk of concrete off of the wall before doing the same.

* * *

Captain Gordon walked up to Commander Namikawa. It had been much too long since he had received a mission from her. Well, as he had said to Ozaki, those days were over.

"So, what's going on?" he inquired.

"There is a kaiju in the industrial section of Osaka," said Namikawa, her face grave. "It seems to be simply walking through it, not actually trying to destroy it. Almost as if it's looking for something…"

Looking for something? What could it possibly be looking for? Captain Gordon could tell there was something else that was bothering her: something she hadn't told him.

"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked.

For a few seconds, she didn't answer. Finally, she spoke.

"… The kaiju is another Zilla."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

"Another Zilla?" said an astonished Ozaki, coming up next to them. "But how is that possible? I thought that the Zilla from the Xilian invasion was the last one."

"So did I," said Namikawa. "Look at the screen; we should be getting video feed any time now." Indeed, no sooner had these words had left her mouth than the large video screen came on.

To tell the truth, as far as kaiju destruction was concerned, the situation could have been a lot worse. There had obviously been no destructive intent involved. Usually, the attacking kaiju left a wide area of decimated buildings. Instead, there seemed to be a straight path of buildings toppled over.

At the front of this self-made path towered another Zilla, just as Commander Namikawa had said. It _looked_ entirely real, hunched down close to the ground and sniffing like a hunting dog following a trail. Even so, it was still hard to believe that it was actually there. Everyone had been so sure that the Zilla species had become extinct. It was almost like seeing a dinosaur.

At this last thought, Ozaki almost laughed to himself. He had, of course, seen a dinosaur before. Several, in fact. Mutated, hundred-meter dinosaurs. Titanosaurus, Anguirus, Godzilla…

"Dang. These things just won't die." Captain Gordon's voice brought Ozaki back to the present. The captain turned back to Namikawa. "But what can we do about it? The _Gotengo_ isn't fixed yet."

"We could call HEAT," suggested Ozaki. Captain Gordon shot him a look, but said nothing.

Namikawa gave them a small smile. "Actually," she said, "HEAT is busy with some business involving the Tachyon aliens in outer space. We are allowing you to fight Zilla with the _Gotengo_ as long as you promise to be careful." Ozaki felt himself grinning. Even Captain Gordon's usually stone-faced expression lit up. Namikawa, though, gave him a stern look.

"And I mean it this time," she added sternly. "No risky stunts like that incident with Manda and the underwater volcano. The _Gotengo _may be usable to an extent, but you must keep in mind at all times that it still isn't fully repaired. Do I make myself clear?"

Captain Gordon smiled, leaned over the intercom, and said the three happiest words he had uttered for two long months:

"Scramble the _Gotengo_!"


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

The _Gotengo_ cruised through the air as smoothly as it ever had. On the outside, it looked good as new. And on the inside… it also looked good as new! Captain Gordon knew that he was supposed to remember that the ship was still relatively fragile, but it looked so much like it had before that he found the task exceedingly difficult. He didn't know how he was going to possibly not take risks when he was actually fighting Zilla.

"Target sighted!" said Ozaki.

Well, there was no choice but to find out if he could do it.

Zilla appeared on the viewscreen, still snuffling along the ground, still knocking buildings over without so much as a second thought. Looking closely, Captain Gordon could make out tiny figures moving away from the creature very slowly. It was a crowd of terrified people, all running for their lives as fast as they could.

Captain Gordon never understood why people ran away when there was a kaiju attack. Any kaiju could outrun a human by simply walking at a normal pace. After all, they _did_ have forty meter legs. If a kaiju wanted to squish them, eat them, or grab one and climb to the top of the Empire State Building, there would be no contest. Running simply wasn't practical. Which was why he had stood up with his sword raised and didn't back down at that moment just after the invasion was over when Godzilla looked straight down at him with murderous intent in his burning eyes…

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Captain Gordon looked back at the screen. They were in firing range now.

* * *

_Where are the freaking fish?!_ Zilla would have thought if his brain operated in words.

For the few weeks after they had broken free, he had swum around, eating fish when he became hungry and sleeping when he became tired. Life had been simple. But it was getting harder and harder to find any fish with each passing day. And today, frustrated after not being able to find any more fish, he had waded ashore in hopes of finding some.

Before Zilla was a completely alien world, unlike anything he had ever witnessed in his short life. The ground here was covered in a variety of strange objects. The most common were grey rectangles, varying in height and thickness. There were also tall, thin tubes that belched out black smoke and short, squat circles that didn't seem to do anything. But if they didn't do anything, why were they there? Along with the rectangles? And why did the tubes emit smoke?

Nothing here made sense, and it quickly overwhelmed the kaiju's limited mind. Ignoring the annoying high-pitched voices that these weird little dots that moved slowly away from him made, Zilla put his nose to the ground and tried to detect some fish.

He was still smelling for a meal when it heard six bangs from behind. The monster spun around to see six balls of fire racing straight towards him. Without thought, Zilla did exactly what his instincts demanded.

He turned heel and bolted like a rabbit.

In motion, Zilla possessed a fluid grace that most kaiju lacked. His legs moved forward a full sixty meters each step, arms held close against his sides and his long tail whipping past behind him. While there were several kaiju such as Rodan and Megaguirus that could fly far superior speeds, none in history could match him in a running race.

This quality, though, was largely downgraded by the fact that Zilla used his power in cowardice. Not that he cared, either.

After a few seconds of sprinting forward, the kaiju heard one, two, three, four, five, six explosions right behind his heels. Knowing that the fireballs were gone, Zilla turned to look at his attacker. It was some kind of giant black flying creature, the smoke trails from the fireballs coming out of its sides still fresh. At the front of it was what Zilla supposed was its nose; it was large, pointed, and, at the moment, spinning around rapidly.

As Zilla stood paralyzed with fear, the creature's nose began to glow a pale blue…

* * *

Inside of the _Gotengo_, Captain Gordon was having the time of his life.

"Fire phaser!" he commanded.

At the front of the warship's command bridge, Ozaki pressed the button on top of the phaser's aiming lever. Captain Gordon could just picture in his mind the _Gotengo_'s drill spinning around, slowly turning sky blue as the sub-zero energy built up in the cryogenic power core.

On the viewscreen, Captain Gordon saw the ultra-low temperature beam blast forward out of the rotating tip of the drill, Zilla in its direct path.

At the last possible second, the reptilian kaiju leaped _300 meters_ into the air, leaving the phaser beam to strike the building directly behind it. The building's surface froze to a temperature of almost absolute zero, then shattered in the warm air surrounding it.

_Why is it that whenever an attack misses, it hits the nearest building?_

Realizing that he had been holding his breath, Captain Gordon exhaled. That speed demon had dodged an energy ray moving at approximately two miles per second! And just as easily as it had that volley of missiles! It just wasn't _possible_! But Zilla had done it, all the same.

* * *

Zilla panted like an exhausted dog, tongue limply hanging out of his colossal jaws. Even for him, this strange flying creature's attack was quickly draining his strength. That last jump took a lot of effort.

Suddenly, Zilla's acute vision picked up movement past his flying antagonist. It was the ocean. The water was starting to churn.

If reptiles had complex facial muscles, Zilla would have smiled.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

"Sir! Reading additional contacts!" reported one of the bridge crew.

"What?" said Captain Gordon.

"Radar is detecting six unidentified objects approaching from the ocean." Fear crept into the bridge officer's voice. "Each one is approximately 90 meters long."

Though no one said a word for several seconds, Captain Gordon knew exactly what each person was thinking.

"What shall we do, sir?" asked another crewman uncertainly.

Captain Gordon couldn't afford to feel fear. He knew from experience that when a captain despaired, his crew automatically followed suit. The day that happened with him was the day Dean Devlin would repent for making such a disrespectful movie.

"Do not retreat. Stand and fight," ordered Captain Gordon with rock-hard resolve.

* * *

Zilla watched the six slowly rising points in the ocean intently. They looked sort of like the small hills on the island he was born on, but ten times as tall and fifty times as wide. And these hills had blue spikes jutting out of the tops.

One of the hills of water erupted, spraying water 100 meters in every direction. As the foaming water fell, a dark shape gradually became visible in its center. Finally, the wave completely descended, revealing the kaiju within. Seawater dripped from its gargantuan body and poured off its back, each trickle as large as Angel Falls.

A square snout poked out of the second hill, twin nostrils the size of the palm trees that dotted that island that they had first hatched on flaring. Sniffing twice, it snorted, sending two clouds of steam billowing into the air like a whale does when breaching. The head and the rest of the sleek body surfaced smoothly.

The third and fourth hills happened much like the first, as the fifth hill cruised toward shore until the rest of the kaiju's body surfaced gradually.

The sixth hill, which had been moving forward more slowly than the others, suddenly accelerated from 30 to 500 kilometers per hour. Just before it hit the shoreline, the hill dipped further into the ocean for a fraction of a second.

_Crash._

The water was whipped into foam as a massive streamlined shape launched itself out of the ocean and 150 meters into the air. With a shockwave felt over a mile away, the final Zilla landed on the ground with a _boom _like a blast of dynamite as its fearsome head bellowed to the sky.

* * *

"Fire missiles!" commanded Captain Gordon. The crewmember manning the missile launchers complied, and the whole bridge watched the viewscreen as the volley raced toward the Zilla that had landed on shore.

As Captain Gordon had suspected, it leapt upwards. However, the missiles continued to cruise forward, toward the target that the Zilla had just made vulnerable by dodging: its brother.

The Zilla that the missiles were now facing, though, dove underwater with lightning-fast speed. The six missiles tried to follow, but to no avail; they exploded on the surface of the ocean, throwing up a large amount of foam and steam, but with no damage to any of the seven kaiju.

"Sir! Zilla is attacking from above!" exclaimed one of the bridge officers in obvious panic. Too late, Captain Gordon realized that the sun had suddenly been eclipsed by a muscular body bearing down on them with something resembling terminal velocity.

The _Gotengo_ gave a mighty jolt as 50,000 tons of scales and spikes slammed into it in midair, sending bridge crew flying as far as the sparks that shot out of the control panels. Only Captain Gordon and Ozaki managed to keep some of their dignity.

"Back to your stations!" bellowed the captain. The crewmembers swiftly obeyed. "Fire maser!"

Ozaki toggled from the phaser and thumbed the trigger. Outside of the airship, the spinning drill of the _Gotengo_ glowed orange, then released it in a dazzling beam, which now appeared to be about to send the Zilla that had just tackled them to the place where socks go.

However, the feeling of triumph was replaced without warning with the uncomfortable sensation of vertigo as the nose of the ship inexplicably pivoted upwards just as the maser was firing.

"What just happened?" he asked the navigation officer.

"Radar confirms that another Zilla ran _underneath_ the ship and jumped upwards, throwing off our shot." She paused. "Sir, it _rescued_ its brother. A reptile that has family-preserving instincts… that's incredible!"

Captain Gordon didn't care if it threw on a blond wig and started to sing _The Best of Both Worlds. _All that mattered was that they found out a way to kill these things somehow or else they could all just go straight to-

The ship lurched to the side again, this time even catching Ozaki at unawares. Then, before anyone could even start to get up, it jerked in the opposite direction, this time even dislodging Captain Gordon from his perch.

"Now what?" Captain Gordon managed to breathe after everyone had scrambled back to their seats.

"Apparently, the other Zillas didn't want to feel left out," remarked the navigation officer sullenly.

This was ridiculous. The _Gotengo_, an all-purpose warship built specifically for fighting vicious kaiju, that had imprisoned the King of the Monsters himself in ice, and that had played almost as large a role as the said monster in thwarting an alien invasion that had wiped out about a quarter of the world's population, was being tossed around like a toy airplane by seven of the most pathetic "kaiju" in history.

The very thought was enough to get Captain Gordon's blood boiling.

"_Fire missiles! Fire phaser! Spin the dang drill and fly forward at full speed! CHARGE!"_

The crew, not wanting to be on the receiving end of one of Captain Gordon's infamous punches in his current state, instantly followed each and every one of his instructions.

Missiles flew, the phaser ripped through buildings, and the _Gotengo_ charged at the nearest Zilla, drill rotating menacingly. The Zillas dodged the missiles, which tried to change direction and follow them again, but ended up half the time hitting buildings, each other, and the white oil tanks scattered along the ground. The tanks exploded in enormous crimson balls of flame, which ignited other tanks, starting a domino effect of perpetual destruction, building after building burned, spewing forth smoke that could be seen miles away. The air was filled with mutant iguanas leaping around in every conceivable direction, missiles trying to connect with them, energy beams weaving back and forth in an attempt to hit one of them, the black warship with the whirring drill chasing after them like a cat does a mouse, billowing balls of fire and choking smoke, and the deafening sounds of all of these.

Chaos.

All from just seven kaiju.

And in the middle of all of this, the battle was decided.

Without warning, as the _Gotengo_ was spewing out its constant stream of missiles, an explosion ripped through the right side of the ship, and a chain reaction of explosions continued until they reached the core, where an extra large detonation grounded the ship completely.

And inside the downed _Gotengo_, Captain Gordon recognized his mistake.

_"And I mean it this time," she added sternly. "No risky stunts like that incident with Manda and the underwater volcano. The _Gotengo _may be usable to an extent, but you must keep in mind at all times that it still isn't fully repaired."_

Well,_ that _sure as heck didn't work!

In the heat of the battle, Captain Gordon had forgotten completely that the ship wasn't at full capacity. And as a result, here he was, sitting there unable to do anything because the freakin' 6.37 percent of the _Gotengo_ that wasn't working had decided to manifest itself by failing to open up the missile hatch when the missile fired. So, the missile hit the closed hatch and exploded, which in turn blew up all the other missiles stored inside.

Why was life so cruel?

Well, at least he could count on getting his revenge on the Zillas soon. This was all simply because of a faulty missile hatch.

After all, how could he possibly be blamed for this?


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

There was a loud clang of metal against metal as the door to Captain Gordon's prison cell slammed shut.

Captain Gordon looked around. He knew this place well. The walls were a dull, dark grey, with black triangle patterns lining them and a water fountain on the far end. Sitting against the walls were shelves of pots and pans, for some reason. His favorite part, though, was the punching bag hanging near the wall where the water fountain was.

The last, but certainly not the first, time he had been here was just before the Xilians had invaded.

Hmm… he still hadn't made it up to Ozaki for breaking him out of there. Well, he did play the biggest part next to Ozaki and Godzilla in saving the earth. Sure, that would do. Okay, so he owed Ozaki nothing.

Captain Gordon trudged up to the punching bag, casually slipped up the boxing gloves resting idly next to it, and contorted his rugged facial features as he imagined Commander Namikawa's face in the middle.

_Wham!_

He socked the punching bag so hard it hit the ground when it swung downward with a loud _slap_.

* * *

"This is insane!" exclaimed Ozaki.

He was standing inside of a dimly lit office, the walls a depressing shade of grey even with the proper amount of lights. On either side of the walls was a glowing blue computer monitor. In front of Ozaki was a glass desk, a flatscreen computer on the right side and a telephone and paperwork organizer (which was unusually full at the moment) on the left. Across the desk, the M-Organization symbol hung on the wall over the ever-strict face of Commander Namikawa.

"You can't lock him up_ now_! We need him! There are at least seven, and probably more, kaiju swimming somewhere in our waters, and now with _nothing_ to keep them in check because Captain Gordon is in a cell! Didn't you see the tape?"

"Yes, I did see the tape," Namikawa replied. "And what part of the tape are you referring to. The part where he blew up the _Gotengo_? Or is it the part where he directly disobeyed my orders and recklessly charged forward into combat after I told him to take absolutely _no_ risks? Oh, and let's not forget the part where he single-handedly turned industrial Osaka into the World's Largest Parking Lot," she finished coldly. Ozaki was too stunned to come up with a good retort.

Finally, he managed to stutter, "But… he was just doing what he had to. He couldn't just let the Zillas destroy the city-"

"Oh yes he could have," interrupted Namikawa. "And that is what he should have done. If Captain Gordon had just set aside his stubborn pride and retreated, we would still have the _Gotengo_ to fight them with under better circumstances, and he wouldn't be in a holding cell."

"But we still need him to fight the Zillas," argued Ozaki. "If he's locked up, how will we defend ourselves from them? We are called the Earth _Defense_ Force for a reason."

"Even if he was free, what could he do? As I just told you, the _Gotengo_ is unusable."

_She's got a point_. "But how will we fight the Zillas? From what I heard, the original Zilla, GINO, laid over two hundred eggs when it attacked New York City. Correct?"

"Yes," she stated simply.

"Then these new Zillas are probably the next generation. They came from a clutch of eggs just as big as the first." Ozaki was struck with another thought.

"Or bigger."

"That is what I was thinking when I first heard that the attacking monster was Zilla. This could be the biggest kaiju epidemic since that… unpleasant business concerning all those Hyper Gyaos from around over the world."

Ozaki shivered. He remembered that one. Hundreds, maybe _thousands_ of the reptilian bats swarming over Kyoto five years ago, turning the already black night sky into a living roof of membraned wings, blocking out the moon, stars, and all hope. Their shrieks of rage and death still echoed in Ozaki's mind. Only Gamera and the efforts of the EDF's main predecessor, the JSDF, had been enough to finally bring all of the Gyaos down.

Gamera had stumbled into the ocean, a whole arms missing and his colossal body soaked with green blood. He had never been seen since. Not even when the Xilians had attacked. He was probably dead.

Kyoto had been completely annihilated by that battle.

The country - the _world_ - couldn't take another blow like that.

Not now.

Ozaki swallowed. "So, what are we going to do?"

This time, it was Commander Namikawa's turn to gulp. "That's our problem, Ozaki.

"We can't do anything."

* * *

A/N: Okay, folks, you know what's coming. Godzilla's going to fight the Zillas. That much is obvious just from reading the title. However, the part you don't know yet is that Godzilla will have some help. So, submit reviews with your guesses of who it'll be! If you guess right, I'll pay you a little homage in one of my chapters.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

The EDF Headquarters later received word that Cape Town, London, and Boston had all also been similarly attacked, with corresponding results. Several Zillas had paid a visit to each, apparently also searching for something with no obvious intent of destruction in mind. The world's experts all agreed. They were looking for food.

Which, with an entire ocean filled to the brim with fish, made about as much sense as referring to one of them as "Godzilla."

There was only one explanation: There were many more Zillas than had shown themselves, and they were rapidly clearing the food out the oceans. Commander Namikawa and Ozaki, as you already know, had been right.

The experts weren't done there, though. They had also reached _another_ conclusion.

The conclusion was, the more Zillas were in one place, the more confident and aggressive they became.

The good news was, that if they caught any Zilla not in a group, it would behave similarly to its grandfather and flee or else be slaughtered easily by any human weapons they happened to cross.

The bad news was, they were _always_ in a group.

The Zillas seem to have picked up on the fact that just partnering up two of them together tripled their combat effectiveness. So, they had developed the first kaiju buddy system.

Hooray.

* * *

Remember late Austin Huff back in Chapter 2? Well, Commander Namikawa was sitting at her desk thinking strikingly similar thoughts.

She tried to start off on an optimistic note; the _Gotengo_ was actually pretty close to being repaired. During the two months following the Xilian invasion, the EDF had guessed that because of the aliens' "farming" of Earth's kaiju, there would be few, if any, of them for awhile.

Which, until now, had been right.

So during that period, the warship technicians had made sure to be thorough with the _Gotengo_'s recovery, making sure that every little thing was right. That hadn't helped during the battle, though, if only because they weren't finished. Now, they had to speed it up. The ship was already at 98.314 completion. It was increasing by .02 percent every minute at a constant rate.

Don't forget, these people have managed to completely rebuild Tokyo after every kaiju attack just in time for another to lay it to waste again. They had a _lot_ of experience.

Despite this flicker of hope, things still looked dim. In the past week, there had been a never-ending torrent of cities laid to waste by the ravenous kaiju. Those antique old tanks, barely used since the warships like the _Gotengo_ were developed, couldn't stop them.

Neither could the helicopters.

Or the fighter planes.

Or the maser-bazooka troops.

If the troops had been mutants, things might have been different; in fact, normal human troops had never been given maser-bazookas before. But now, thanks to the Xilians, all the mutants but Ozaki were long gone. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Ozaki… he had been through a lot. Not only had he contributed more, probably, than anybody (except Godzilla) in fighting off the Xilians, but in the process lost the closest thing he had to a family: the other mutants. She never figured out how, just after Kazama died, he managed to master himself completely with nothing but Captain Gordon's words of,

"Ozaki. Get a grip! We're going in!"

And speaking of Ozaki, a dark blur ran so fast into her office without warning so quickly that it almost looked like it had teleported there before slowing down to where it was recognizable as Ozaki, who was breathing quick, uneven breaths.

And it took a _lot_ to make a mutant out of breath. _He must have really booked it,_ she thought.

At any rate, Commander Namikawa instantly knew something was wrong. Not only because he was out of breath, but largely because he wasn't standing at formal military attention as etiquette dictated. For the moment, though, she didn't care. "What is it, Ozaki?"

"Ma'am," he panted. "Ocean Surveillance Radar shows several hundred large objects congregating only ten miles off Japan's coast.

"They're heading toward Tokyo."

Namikawa couldn't stop a small part of herself from asking, _Why is it always Tokyo?_ Most of her, however, was trying to digest Ozaki's report.

Why would they all want to go to Japan? _Tokyo_, no less. Weren't they all just looking for fish? It made no sense why they would all want to spontaneously go to one place.

Unless…

Namikawa, highly trained Commander of the Earth Defense Force, temporary prisoner of the Xilians (who had every intention of using her as food), and survivor of a self-destructing Xilian Mother Ship which had led a slaughter of billions, felt icy fear slowly thrusting its way through her gut as she remembered the only reason besides food that a Zilla had to travel somewhere.

Like why the first one had visited New York.

The Zillas were nesting.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

A nervous tension filled the Tokyo atmosphere.

Sure, the citizens of Japan knew about the new threat of the Zillas. The news media had made a particularly large point of making "The Next Gyaos Swarm?", "The End of the World?", and similar titles their favorite topics.

But the people of Japan did the best they could to pretend that nothing was wrong, that all of their lives could suddenly be lost on one of fate's many whims. Tonight, for them, there was no threat

For Americans living in this year of 2007, it is shockingly easy to forget that we are in fact at war, while over 140,000 troops are stationed at Iraq. The reason for this blissful ignorance is the simple fact that it just doesn't affect us. It affects the soldiers, true enough, but for the people who aren't involved or have family members involved in the war often don't give it a second thought when the subject arises. America hasn't had to worry about a war happening on its soil for decades.

And, until now, neither had Japan.

But now the danger was present, to them. Not across a whole ocean, but right where they were. Perhaps not when they were, but every second that passed could easily change that. Until that time came, though, they just had to keep on performing in the play that had become their life.

End of scene.

Without warning, Tokyo's alarms blasted a painfully loud wail, carrying with it a signal clear to all who did not have suicidal intentions:

_Run for your life._

And all the civilians in Japan's capital city swiftly agreed.

People dropped what they were doing, whether it was cutting hair, eating their double cheeseburgers at McDonald's, or typing up some kind of fan fiction story. Everything that didn't have to do with running the direction everyone else was running was forgotten in a primal display of pure self-preservation as millions of people fled anywhere but toward the sea.

And they weren't quick enough.

* * *

Like a perversion of a school of fish, three hundred forty-four kaiju raced underwater, their instincts all tugging them towards the same place. Their 90 meters bodies writhed like sea snakes, and their arms and legs were all tucked tight against their body to reduce water resistance while their tails swung from left to right, like huge crocodiles.

Looking at the school of Zillas, it really _did_ look similar to the giant flock of Gyaos that had attacked Gamera at Kyoto in 1999. The Zillas weren't evil like the Gyaos, though. Their _existence _was evil, certainly, a cold, cruel mockery of all that the real King of the Monsters was, but they weren't evil themselves. They were just… animals. Animals that could potentially throw off the natural balance of the world's ecosystem as well as mankind's empire on this planet, but animals, nonetheless.

Even animals need some kind of limit, though.

Like when the entire population of them gets together and decides to destroy a major city for the umpteenth time.

And try to lay the groundwork there for mankind's downfall.

True, that last part wasn't intentional, just a side-effect of what they _really_ meant to do, but it would still happen.

The first Zilla that had attacked Osaka felt a pleasant breeze from the night air as he lifted his torso out of the water. Looking around, he observed his brethren do the same. Several also roared cheerfully as they gazed upon the odd alien structures that he supposed covered the planet. Many had not seen one of these before, and their facial features, though very subtle, showed intrigue in some, but puzzlement in most.

It didn't matter what they felt towards it, though. Instinct was calling, and animals never defy instincts. Instincts that not only called, that called _loudly_, like an annoying, high-pitched voice demanding something at the top of its tiny lungs over and over. Not to mention that the source of this tiny voice is standing right next to your ear, yanking it towards the direction it wants you to go with all its might until your feeble will breaks before it.

Not even 90 meter daikaiju could stand _that_.

So, as fast as they could, they had swum, to rid themselves of that tiny voice of evolution. Now that they were here, the little voice let up a little. But not much. The voice of instinct would only let up, it told them, until they reached shore. Then, of course, it would tell them it would not be silent until they found some kind of large, closed area. And _then_ it would command them to fill up this territory they had staked out with 3 meter tall eggs. And so on.

The Zillas quickly waded to shore and set to work. Reptilian feet large enough to park three cars in smashed down on short buildings. Tails longer than basketball courts battered taller ones into rubble while lethal claws tore at any building in front of them. Walls of flame exploded into existence from the Zillas' jaws, taking care of anything that was still left.

In their minds, the Zillas recalled doing something very similar the day they hatched. When they all swam around in an unruly mob, stripping the reefs surrounding them of all else that swam. This was no different. Just bigger.

The screaming crowds of people below them, though, saw no similarity whatsoever. To them, the Zillas were malevolent beasts searching for more buildings to decimate, more people to slaughter. This was much different. And bigger.

Apparently, the phrase "size does matter" is in the eye of the beholder.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

In the streets of Tokyo, twenty tanks rolled toward the inferno being created by the Zillas, barrels already elevated at kaiju level. They moved in an organized formation, spread out over five streets with four tanks on each one. To the civilians, who were still running for there lives, the tanks appeared blood-red from the light coming from the immense fires that they were proceeding toward. Even the tanks themselves looked grim, to say nothing of how their drivers inside them looked. Still, they rolled on.

Just as the first group of tanks entered firing range, a Zilla that had previously been occupying itself with ripping apart a building using only its teeth looked up. Its orange eyes narrowed, and a low hiss escaped its monstrous throat. The tanks paused at this display of aggression, then fired.

Four loud _booms_ shook the air as an equal number of shells were launched at the Zilla's torso. The Zilla, though, had other plans. It spun around, its tail destroying the remnants of the building in the process, and sprinted behind another building just in time. The tank shells slammed into a third building, shattering windows and causing concrete to rain down on the streets.

A few seconds passed.

Suddenly, a large grey head poked out from behind the building. The tanks immediately opened fire, but to no avail; Zilla's head quickly retreated, and the building received a dose of explosives again.

A few more seconds.

One of Zilla's scaly arms protruded from around the corner. The tanks shot at it again, but it too was quickly tucked out of sight, and nobody would have ever guessed that that large empty space sitting there in the middle of the city had once been a building. The tank drivers furiously realized it was _playing_ with them. They waited, fingers ready to press triggers at the slightest movement from that corner.

The only problem was, the next movement didn't _come _from the corner.

Without warning, a gargantuan grey blur leapt from the top of a building on the side of the tank group, destroying the frontmost tank when it landed on top of it. Without a moment's hesitation, it pivoted to the side and engulfed the rest of the tanks with a blast of flame from its maw. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing to suggest that the tanks had ever been there but a giant scorch mark on the road.

When the next group of tanks rolled up to another Zilla, it also hid behind a building. Oh, but the tank drivers were too smart to be fooled by the same trick twice. They had the middle two aim their cannons upwards at the sides so that the Zillas wouldn't be able to ambush them from there again. After a few seconds, a long tail swept across the ground. The first and last tanks fired at it, but, obviously, they only accomplished making two large craters in the middle of the street.

As they waited for its next feint, a large shape sneaked up from behind with great stealth, despite the fact that it was 90 meters tall.

The Zilla suddenly lunged downward, crushing the tank in its jaws. Then, with a whip of its mighty head, it flung the mass of crumpled up steel at the front of the street. The Zilla's aim was true, and the destroyed tank hit the one at the front in a massive explosion. Then it walked forward to the other side of the street casually, crushing the other two tanks underfoot before they could turn around to shoot it.

So, it makes perfect sense why the four tanks that drove down the next street had one tank pointing in every direction. The middle two were pointed left and right at the tops of the buildings surrounding them, the front one was pointed forward, and the back one was pointing, of course, backwards. There was no place where the Zillas could hit them now. It was foolproof!

Right?

No.

Before they were even in firing range of the Zilla at the end of the street, the buildings on the sides caved in, and from each one a Zilla sprang forward. The two middle tanks fired desperately, but they were still aimed too far upward to hit the kaiju duo. With perfect symmetry to each other, the Zillas tore apart the tanks with their clawed hands. Then, they spun in opposite directions from each other and sprinted towards the remaining tanks which were pointing completely _away_ from them, heads close to the ground. Their heads scooped up the tanks from underneath, lifting them off the road and propelling them at two other unfortunate buildings.

As the final tank group rolled down the street, the drivers had almost lost hope. The Zillas weren't just numerous and fierce, they were _smart_. Smart enough to know when they were outmatched and how to form a strategy against their enemy in a fashion strikingly similar to the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park, or else run away. Even the first, solitary one, GINO, had been able to set traps. In fact, it had set a trap very similar to the last one. It had gotten a squad of helicopters to turn the opposite way, then jumped straight through the building behind them and killed them all. And _now _the Zillas could attack in groups. The odds had simply turned against the tanks.

Nevertheless, the last four tanks had no choice but to keep their barrels pointed in every direction again and move towards the Zilla at the end of the street that they knew was pretending not to notice them.

The Zilla acted like it only just saw them, but, oddly, held its ground. The lead tank hesitated, then fired. The Zilla ducked, causing the shell to collide with the building behind it, then shot a blast of fire from its mouth at the first tank. The kaiju was too far away for the flame to actually damage the armored vehicle, but it blocked it from sight for a few seconds. When the fire dispersed into the air, the Zilla was nowhere in sight. Vanished.

Upon further inspection, though, the first tank driver found that in its place was a huge, gaping hole, too deep for him to see the bottom.

Before the driver had time to contemplate what this meant, the entire street erupted as the Zilla surfaced from underneath as easily as if it was water, sending chunks of concrete flying into the air.

The tanks were hurled almost as high before they finally hit the bottom of the giant, lengthwise crater that took the place of the street below, scarring it with four large, black smudges where each the tanks had landed.

As if the battle had never happened, the Zillas trudged deeper into the heart of Tokyo.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

"Do it."

"No."

"Do it."

"No."

"Do it."

"No."

"Do it."

"What do you want from me?"

"To do it!"

"No!"

Ozaki growled. Trying to annoy Commander Namikawa wasn't getting him anywhere.

"Come on, Chief. The entire Zilla population is down there, _and_ they just wiped out our only defenses except the one sitting in front of your face." He gestured to the _Gotengo_.

"It's too risky," she insisted, "even with the _Gotengo_ fully repaired. _Especially_ since it's the entire population of Zillas that are in Tokyo."

"So you just want to give up. You just want to sit here while all the Zillas flatten our capital city, lay more than sixty thousand eggs in the middle of it, and spread to the rest of the world. Don't you understand, Commander? This. Is. Our. Only. Chance."

Namikawa sighed. "We just can't do it, Ozaki. With three hundred forty-four Zillas all clustered together, even he can't pull it off. Not even with a complete _Gotengo_. You were there. He couldn't even beat seven of them."

"That was only because the _Gotengo_ malfunctioned because it was only 93 percent finished," pointed out Ozaki.

"93.67 percent," corrected Namikawa.

"Like it matters! What I'm saying is, we have to at least try."

Commander Namikawa stayed quiet for a few moments. "Doing it is sentencing him _and _you to death," she said finally.

"Not doing it is sentencing the whole human race to death," replied Ozaki.

Namikawa seemed to remain silent forever before she finally spoke.

"Fine. Do it."

* * *

Captain Gordon slugged the punching bag again. And again. And again.

He remembered the last time he had been here. Just because he _might_ have had a certain 300 meter sea dragon wrapped around his ship, he _might _have driven straight into an underwater volcano to get it off, and that _might_ have damaged the _Gotengo_ a little. So what? Hmph. Now _that_ was unfair.

He remembered being stuck in the same room he was in now for awhile, doing exactly what he was doing now. Socking away at the punching bag like it was Dean Devlin. Then he had heard the door swing open, and Ozaki had walked in and freed him.

_Creak._

Captain Gordon could almost hear that door opening.

"Captain Gordon."

He could hear Ozaki's voice, too.

"Captain Gordon?"

What the? Why did he just imagine he heard Ozaki twice? And why had it sounded insistent the second time?

"_Captain Gordon_?"

Captain Gordon whirled around to find Ozaki standing at the open doorway. For one brief moment, Captain Gordon thought he was seeing things, too. Then he realized.

_Ohhhhhhhhhh…_

* * *

"Alpha system: loaded."

"Beta system: loaded."

"Main engines: ready."

A large section of the ceiling above them started to open like a large automatic door, red lights dancing along the edges. Suddenly, half a dozen fires leapt into existence underneath the ship. It started to rise into the air.

"This is where it all ends, boys," Captain Gordon's rough voice sounded throughout the bridge. "The last battle to end all battles. This is Operation: …"

A few seconds passed.

"How about Operation: Zillah 91?" piped up one of the bridge officers.

The rest of the crew quickly made it clear that Operation: Zillah 91 sounded incredibly corny.

"What about Operation: DragonMaster02?" suggested another.

Captain Gordon looked at him like he had just asked if he could stick his head in of the exhaust vents to see whether or not all his face would burn off.

"Forget the name. Let's just go." His crew's "names" had put him out of his mood.

Fire spewed out of the back of the warship and propelled it out of the base, leaving only a large amount of smoke behind.

* * *

The _Gotengo_flew towards Tokyo as fast as it could, jets of flame and exhaust trailing behind in its wake. In the dark of the night, it seemed to blend in with the very air around it, save for the front, which was reflecting an orange glow coming from Japan's greatest city.

Captain Gordon sat at his chair and stared ahead. Something told him this was it. Here he was, captain of the world's greatest warship, heading headlong into his perfect element: the battlefield. He had homing missiles, masers, phasers, _and_ a ridiculously huge drill. All his, to use as he saw fit against his enemy.

And yet…

He was still no match for what he was up against.

One warship versus three hundred forty-four 90 meter, running, jumping, clawing, biting, swimming, burrowing, fire-breathing, _smart_ daikaiju fighting alongside each other.

Even Captain Gordon was forced to admit it.

He was screwed.

The _Gotengo_ kept going, whether to its doom or otherwise.

* * *

The Zilla that attacked Osaka looked up and snarled.

That same black creature that he had fought a few days ago was flying towards them, its giant nose rotating. His family was spread pretty far throughout the rectangle-forest by now, but about one hundred of them noticed it.

The nose glowed blue once again, and the Zilla tensed himself to fight.

* * *

"Sir!" shouted one of the bridge crew. "Reading two additional contacts!"

"More Zillas?" inquired Captain Gordon.

"Negative, sir. One is 20 meters, the other is 100. They are approaching us rapidly from Tokyo Bay."

* * *

Mob psychology is a study of how people think when they are in groups. According to mob psychology, when one person expresses something, the other people in the group begin to think similarly. For example, if somebody in a crowd starts to chant, the people around him will start to do the same. More and more people will join in the chant, and before long, everybody will be doing it.

It seems mob psychology also applies to daikaiju.

This would explain why even though only a few Zillas were close enough to the ocean to see that it had started to violently churn in two places, within a few moments every of them were staring at the two points intently. Even the _Gotengo_ was absolutely still.

The smaller mass of foaming water suddenly rose up and dissipated. In its place stood a kaiju. If you could call it that. It certainly didn't _look_ like one, other than its size (which, at only 20 meters, was not impressive either). It more resembled some kind of character from sort of Saturday morning children's TV show. It had a round, light green body, a small tail, and an almost kind face. If reptiles could laugh, everybody within five miles would be struck deaf by the Zillas' laughing.

If they had been laughing, though, what happened next would have stopped them cold.

The other area of frothing water rose up as the first, but more slowly. It kept on traveling upwards, and upwards, until it towered over any of the Zillas standing on the shore. When it was 100 meters tall, the water that was blanketing it slowly started to fall.

The body was dark grey in color, covered in tough skin that had a texture almost like tree bark, though obviously stronger, with small, sharp-looking points sticking out at random angles. The legs were very muscular. They had to be to be able to hold up 55,000 tons of flesh, muscle, and bone.

The upper body was also very well-sculpted, pectoral and abdominal muscles in top condition. Sprouting from the top of the chest were two long arms, with small, four-fingered hands tipped with gleaming claws.

Mounting its colossal back were three rows of bone-white dorsal fins that wiggled slightly when it moved, running from the end of its long, powerful tail to the very top of its head. The face looked distinctly like that of a dinosaur, twisted into a perpetual, angry frown. The inside of its jaws were armed with sharp fangs, and two small, pointed ears protruded from the sides of the head.

And most forbidding of all, adjacent to the ears were two eyes. Though small, they seemed to leap out from the rest of the creature's face. They blazed a fierce orange, as if a raging fire smoldered just behind them.

The head reared back, the jaws parted, and an unearthly roar issued from its throat to signal that Godzilla was ready to fight.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

In his mind, Godzilla remembered.

The King of the Monsters had vast stores of memories. He remembered back when he was small, back when things made sense. He had been lying there after a fresh kill, belly stuffed with Three-Horn meat, with his family. The sky was bright, very bright, not a cloud in the sky.

But then it became too bright. He had needed to squint his keen dinosaurian eyes to see a small, shining ball fly over and past the horizon. All was still for a second or two. Then the edge of the horizon glowed as bright as the sun above. About ten seconds later, he felt an almighty _jolt_, and some of the younger Godzillasaurs cried out.

On his feet and fully alert by now, he had seen dark clouds forming not only in the skies above where the fireball fell, but traveling along the ground, clear over the mountains. And they were coming fast.

He had turned and ran. This was one foe he could not scare away or fight, he'd sensed that much. Behind him, the clouds came closer and closer. He ran as fast as he could toward the one place he could escape anything: the ocean.

He turned around. The cloud was almost on the members of his family who had lagged behind. He had screamed, or as close as he could come to a real scream, as the cloud engulfed his youngest brother, scales burning away wherever the cloud touched. The Godzillasaurus roared in pain, stumbled, fell, and never got up again.

The ocean was close. He could see it. He heard another cry behind him, and when he turned his head again, the second oldest brother was no longer there.

Ignoring the rapidly expanding feeling of stunned loss in his heaving chest, he had put all effort into throwing one leg in front of the other. Both the ocean and the burning cloud came quickly closer, like walls closing in on him.

He had looked around once more, no matter how much he didn't want to. His aunt and father were nowhere to be seen. They had probably never had time to scream.

The ocean and the cloud were only a couple feet away each, along with his mother, and the tip of his tail began to sting. Summoning all of his remaining strength, he had jumped.

The ocean felt cool, refreshing, and safe when his scaly body slipped into it. The feeling hardly lasted, because of two things: for one, the burning cloud roared over him and the ocean surface, throwing him around like a pterosaur in a hurricane. The second, and far worse, reason is what the cloud had dumped into the sea.

The skeleton, all the flesh incinerated off, of his mother.

Dinosaurs couldn't cry.

But they could feel loss, and the pain it brings.

His soul burned away as much as his family's bodies, he had swum straight down. He didn't know why and he didn't care. He had no idea how long he kept swimming, away from the grief and away from the death, but eventually he found a cave. With no reason to justify the action, he swam inside and fell into a deep sleep.

_Boom._

His eyes had snapped open.

_Boom._

He had lifted his head.

_Boom._

He had growled and swum to the surface.

It seemed like he had been asleep for lifetimes, he felt so groggy. But that, of course, was impossible. He couldn't have slept for more than a night's worth of hours. There was no sign of that demonic cloud.

But the world looked… different.

Where there had been a cliff the day before, there was a sandy beach. He was familiar with sand and beaches, of course, but how had this one gotten here? He had also noticed that the trees were different. The trees he knew had rough bark wrapped around thick trunks with tough little leaves. Instead, there were smooth-barked, narrow trees topped with broad leaves that swayed in the slightest breeze.

_Bam-bam-bam._

"Aaaaaaaahhh!"

_Boom._

He had heard a whole range of sounds he had never heard before coming from the forest of mutated trees. Curious, he had walked forward, the foreign sounds becoming louder with each step.

He saw movement in the fauna at his feet. There were little creatures that he had never seen before scurrying around in the brush. Their skin did not seem to be formed by many small scales, like his. Instead, they possessed what seemed to be several very large scales. They varied in color; some were green, some were brown, and their faces and hands, which tightly gripped long, strange instruments, were light tan. On their heads, they had dark patches of what he recognized as fur, like that on the tiny furballs who spent most of their time in their burrows. It had been immediately clear, of course, that these Things were not furballs. How had he ever overlooked these oddities?

The Things had looked up at him. He kept walking forward, trying to see what else had changed over the past night. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he had seen the brown Things suddenly point their long objects at him, and before he knew it, the air was filled with that _bam-bam-bam_ sound he had heard before. He felt little pinpricks on his skin; they weren't exactly painful, and they didn't even pierce his scales, but the sensation was not pleasant. He guessed they were somehow related to the _bam-bam-bam_s.

He had roared at them to go away, but it was almost as if they did not know what he meant. They had kept running through the trees and poking him from far away, however they accomplished this. He had eventually made his way to the beach, the brown Things still following him. He noticed, though, that the green Things with the slanted eyes didn't bother him at all.

He wanted to go back to the sea; his curiosity, naturally, had diminished by now. He looked out towards the ocean, but saw yet another thing he had never seen before. Sitting in the middle of the ocean were several very weird-looking, large objects, with smooth sides but topped with uneven protrusions.

Before he had time to glean anything else from this new sight, however, a ball of fire and smoke jumped from one of the uneven things at the top. Next, he heard a _boom_, just like he had earlier. Finally, his cheek exploded.

The pain was tremendous, unlike anything he had ever felt. Blood poured from the wound in a thick stream. He had screamed with pain like he never had before, a terrible, high-pitched wail.

It didn't seem to be enough for the monsters in the water. It was obvious by now that that's what they were. They must have somehow been allies with the little brown Things. They used the same weapons, a loud bang followed by pain. The only difference was that these large creatures had _much_ more powerful weapons.

Through all the fiery, searing, pain, he heard another _boom_ as if it was from a mile away. The pain that followed, however, was anything but distant. He had screamed again and again, a testimony to his suffering. At last, it was too much. He had collapsed.

To his own anguish, though, he stayed conscious. He had hoped to be knocked out, even to die. Anything was better than this. He heard squeaky little voices vocalizing quickly. He managed to open one eye; the brown Things were moving towards him slowly, their poke-weapons raised.

Inside, something snapped.

He lashed out with his tail, a feeling of sick pleasure blossoming inside him when he felt several tiny spines crack. He heard screams of surprise from the Things as he rose.

He gave the aquatic monsters no time to hurt him again, and the Things no time to escape from their deaths. They had earned that much, and he brought it graciously, whether it was from his tail or his feet. The whole thing was done in a matter of seconds, without any need for the intervention of thought.

When he had been positive that all the brown Things were dead, he trudged off, leaving their bodies to rot in the sand as the pain started to slowly return.

He had walked as far as he could, but he could feel his strength leaving him like the dinosaurs he had killed. He had done it dozens of times. It only took one bite, then he would only have to have to stand back and wait while death took its inevitable toll on his prey. To think that this was now happening to him...

Even dinosaurs had some sense of irony.

At last, he couldn't walk anymore. All sense of movement had left his legs, replaced by the irresistible urge to let them buckle. He did, and his body seemed to fall in slow motion before it hit the ground much harder than it should have.

He had laid there, unable to do anything as death slowly began to creep over him. The world blurred and focused, brightened and darkened, changed and reformed before his eyes as the agony dragged on.

He had no idea how long it took them to come. Time was becoming a very undependable thing. But whether it was five minutes or five hours, he could just barely make out a band of the narrow-eyed Things marching towards him.

One of them stepped forward and began to speak. He couldn't understand anything it said in its high-pitched tone. This was becoming tiresome. His chest heaved with the effort it took to breathe as Thing kept chattering.

This continued for some time. Finally, the Thing turned around and yelled something unintelligible to the others. They raised their poke-weapons to alert. The leader shouted something again. The poke weapons were relaxed, while one Thing raised a stick attached to a white field that waved in the wind with a red circle in the middle of it.

Then, without turning back, they had left.

His mind was filled with an exhausted sort of anger at the Things. He thought that the squinty-eyed ones would at least help him somehow. But all they did was annoy him for awhile and leave him for dead.

He had wondered when the tan Things and their monsters would arrive to eat him. It was only a matter of time. Once he was dead, they would engorge themselves on his body. So why didn't they come?

He waited.

They didn't come back.

He eventually recovered from his wounds. He regained his former abilities of walking, running, hunting… he healed completely, and they didn't come.

Until the Cold Time ten years later.

The latest of the Cold Times had just begun. He could feel it in his bones. He had recently eaten his fill, and he had nothing in his immediate agenda. At the moment, he was just taking a quiet nap on the sandy beach, basking in the sun's warmth as much as he could before the warmth left for four months.

Then some unholy racket had filled his tiny ears. He turned his dinosaurian head to the sky, where the noise was coming from. There was some kind of flying creature he had never seen. There were no feathers on it; its shiny body glinted in the sunlight as it turned. It didn't flap its wings when it flew, but it somehow moved faster than any bird he had ever seen. It also didn't seem to have any legs or head.

With a hiss, he realized what this meant. The Things, and their monsters. They had come for him again.

He had jumped to his feet, ready to fight it and its stab-weapons, whenever it used them. It stayed in the air, far out of his reach, that annoying blare coming from it the whole time.

He waited for many minutes as it circled overhead like a pterodactyl stalking him and his brothers when they had been hatchlings.

Finally, it had seemed to choose a direction; it flew out to open sea, towards the horizon.

Several thoughts had gone through his mind:

_Did it see me?_

_Is it afraid?_

_Will it wait until I'm not looking, the attack?_

Suddenly, it was ten years ago once again.

The sky flashed a blinding white. Given the choice between looking at that or the sun, he would have picked the sun.

Then came the _boom_, knocking him off his feet and causing his massive body to crash to the sand.

A dark cloud started to take the place of the light.

And it was rushing straight towards him.

His first instinct was to get to stand up and run for his life. But when he tried, a searing pain shot through his back. It must have been hurt when he fell.

So he laid there, helpless, as the second cloud descended upon him.

They had hit him. He was lifted off the ground like a leaf in the wind, his flesh burning. Then he felt an even greater burst of pain, followed by two _cracks_. He had been thrown against a tree. If his back hadn't been seriously injured before, it sure was now. One of those _cracks_ must have been the sound of the tree trunk snapping, but there had been another…

No area of his body was free of the pain. Whether from his broken spine or the burning cloud wrapped around him like a hellish blanket, he was senseless with the sensation.

Then the Changes started.

His skin suddenly began to feel uncomfortable. Gradually, it grew to be painful to even wear, as if an invisible hand born from the cloud was stretching his skin to its limits.

He summoned the strength to look down at his body. His skin was shriveling up and turning dark grey right before his eyes. He was dying.

He was losing his perspective on things. Between his morphing skin texture, the brightness of the absolute darkness, all the blood beginning to block his vision, and the sting of the cloud, it was hard to tell what was happening.

So it took several seconds for him to realize that sections of his back were erupting.

That was obviously what was happening, because he had kept on hearing a sharp _rip_, which was soon accompanied by twice as much pain as before that spread throughout his backside and to the rest of his aching body like a malevolent disease.

After this had happened about thirty times, the pain mercilessly intensifying each time, they abruptly stopped. It still caused unendurable agony to so much as move, but to exist at all brought unendurable agony anyway. He could do that much. What made him hesitate was the fear of what he would see.

He turned his head and looked.

Bathed in blood, his back had been replaced by a series of wobbly spikes. They seemed to glow crimson in the dim light. His now-grey skin was torn outward by the event of these spines knifing their way out of his body.

There was no longer period of time he had ever experienced than what he went through then. Laying there, the pain that should have killed him making his world a living nightmare, the winds screeching in his ears. This was easily ten times worse than that time after the Things had attacked him.

_The Things!_

His mind blazed with anger, fury he had never known, outmatching even the frenzy that had washed over him when killing the tan Things.

_They_ had done all this to him. They had almost killed him with their aquatic monsters, they had made this evil cloud - of course! This cloud was exactly like the one that had killed his family. They must have done that, too.

They killed his family!

_They had to pay!_

_THEY HAD TO DIE!_

From the deepest depths of his heart, he had screamed like he had never screamed before. Not the pathetic wail from the so-called "fight" with the Things' monsters. A deep, sinister roar that ripped through the air more than even the cloud ever could.

When he opened his eyes, the cloud was gone.

Since then he had killed thousands upon thousands of the Things. He remembered their horrible screams as he shot their fate at them from his mouth and crushed their pathetic bodies underfoot. For years and years he made them pay for their crimes. They tried to fight back, but they could do nothing. Even when they managed to bury him in Hard Water, he had risen up after only a few minutes in a ball of fire. In fact, they and their Flying Sharp-Nosed Monster had been so scared that they ran. They ran across the whole world, with him chasing them until they had nowhere left to go.

He had been so certain that they had deserved it.

Then he had met Minya.

He had just defeated the Three-Headed Transformer. The one that had come so close to killing him, just like the Things had so many times. He was just about to deal out justice to a tiny group of Things that had crawled out of their Sharp-Nosed Monster as a kind of farewell gesture, when he saw him.

Short, fat, and extremely pathetic. The sight of him had sent a pang through his long-darkened heart. He reminded him of his lost brethren. And he was defending the Things.

The message was clear. _Enough is enough._

He had turned and left. His long, hard conflict with the Things was finally over.

Now, standing before hundreds of Imposters, those memories began flooding back. The little creature beside him, willing to fight these creatures by his side… he remembered his family doing the same thing, whenever they went out to hunt. The columns of smoke rising from the ground where the stone structures had formerly stood… visions of his family running, only to be slaughtered, filled his mind.

The stone forest they were attacking: that was his territory. The water they had swum through to get here: that was his home. Wherever they could ever possibly go, land or sea, they would always be unwelcome.

This was his planet.

With a mighty roar, Godzilla began the battle.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

The Zillas seemed paralyzed for a moment after Godzilla roared. They instinctively were uneasy against any enemy that displayed no signs of fear; self-confident creatures were usually those who had extra skill in combat situations. And here were two of them actually going on the offensive against an entire army. For a moment, despite the comfort of their overwhelming numbers, each one of them felt a pang of fear pierce them like an arrow as the roar echoed in their ears.

But only for a moment.

As if their minds were linked, every Zilla pushed their fear aside at the exact same time. And, at the exact same time, they all roared back.

A roar from just one of the Zillas would have cracked all the windows of every building within one square block.

Now imagine what three hundred forty-four roars would be able to do.

For one thing, all the windows in the entire city would shatter. For another, several of the chunks of smashed concrete on the ground, leftovers of what were once giant buildings, would do the same thing. The shards of glass and stone would blast out like a shotgun-burst of knives. To the thick skin of the three hundred-plus kaiju, this wouldn't matter much. Their eyes, however, were much softer. Immediately, the bellows of aggression would turn into howls of pain. Finally, on a less important note, Minya and the crew of the Gotengo would reach up and cover their ears, while Godzilla alone stayed passive to all the noise.

And that's exactly what happened.

Thankfully, none of the jagged pieces of glass traveled far enough to reach Godzilla or Minya, who were still wading towards the shore.

On the plus-side, this meant that the Zillas were weakened before the fight even began.

On the downside, this made them even more crazed and dangerous.

The moment Godzilla's foot touched land, the assault began.

The Zilla closest to him charged at full speed. Lines of blood ran from its eyes like streamers. Godzilla growled as it rapidly got closer.

At the last possible moment, Godzilla ducked. The Zilla, who wouldn't have had time to stop even if it could see, careened straight over his back. Godzilla's spines slashed deep gashes in its belly as it flew overhead. Blood and internal organs spilled onto the King of the Monsters, which were promptly shaken off. The ocean turned deep red where the Zilla touched it.

One down, three hundred forty-three to go.

* * *

On the other side of the city, the _Gotengo _was having its own problems.

The bridge crew had broken out into an all-out cheer when Godzilla had risen from the sea. Inspired by the appearance of their new ally, they had struck the Zillas before they even had time to turn their attention back to them. They had finally managed to use a fully charged phaser.

Ten enormous ice sculptures were now stood motionless in the middle of Tokyo.

"Fire missiles!" yelled Captain Gordon.

A volley of missiles sprang obediently from the warship's sides, moving directly at the twenty or so kaiju now running at it.

Some ducked. Some jumped. And a few in the back, just a few, didn't have time to react before the missiles caught them in the chest. These ones were blasted off their feet by the impact. They each hit the ground with a heavy _thud_ that sent vibrations through the ground. None of their brothers even looked back, leaving them there to die in a pool of their own blood.

The _Gotengo_ immediately lurched to the right, causing the Zillas that had leapt over the missiles to miss their mark completely. Some of the more foolish of them tried to change their direction in midair. This only caused them spin around uselessly. The ones who attempted this didn't land; they crashed. The first one probably broke one or more of its ribs. Even if it didn't, it wouldn't have mattered, considering that it was killed instantly by the force of next Zilla landing on top of it. After that one crushed the first, yet another came and killed it in the same manner. This continued for some time until only three out of the eight or nine Zillas that had jumped were still alive.

They were in back of it, so it couldn't see them. They knew this. It was a law: the eyes of anything are always at the front. About as quietly as they could, they charged the warship again.

But what the Zillas didn't know about was 360 degree cameras.

Three microphasers, usually reserved for small-fry such as Xilian Fighters, neatly swept across the line of kaiju. Even they weren't powerful to actually kill any of them, but they did manage to succeed in knocking them all down.

At the same time, the Zillas that hadn't jumped were still closing in. By now, they were very close. The one in front leapt at the _Gotengo_, claws ready to rip off the metal hull.

"Activate the drill!" shouted the Captain.

The bridge officer controlling the mechanism in question hastily obeyed.

The drill began to spin late enough so that the Zilla wouldn't have time to take back his attack, but early enough so that they would not get crashed into like a deer by a monster truck. Captain Gordon's timing was impeccable; if he had been only a half-second later in his command, they would have all died right then.

Instead, the Zilla was impaled on the drill, sliding up to the base of it before decelerating. The _Gotengo_ was pushed back quite a distance by the impact, but it was not damaged. Hunks of pink flesh fell to the ground, the spinning drill ripping them off their former host.

The rest of the Zillas stood still, frozen with shock and fear at the gruesome image of their brother speared on the end of the _Gotengo_'s drill.

Captain Gordon decided to use this point of hesitation to his advantage. "Fire maser!"

Not only did the beam of intensified microwave energy obliterate all of the Zillas standing there, but it also blasted the dead corpse off the drill.

Almost negligently, the warship fired a missile volley at the Zillas behind it that were not yet dead. It didn't even turn around to see whether they had killed all of them. It simply moved to the center of the city as the last bellows of the dying kaiju rang out behind them.

* * *

Minya and Godzilla both stood their ground as ten Zillas ran at them, cries thirsty for bloodshed tearing from their fleshy throats. Minya's cartoonish features reflected their owner's mixture of fear and determination. Godzilla's face, as per usual, showed no sign that the creature could even feel fear.

A faint hissing sound slipped through the smoky air. In sync with the noise, the maple leaf-shaped fins on the backs of the two kaiju began to glow sky blue in the same manner as the burners of a stove turning red with heat. The centers of these masses of color quickly flared blinding white with the energy being discharged.

Their mouths slowly opened, as if they were automated. From the backs of their throats, light the same color as their spines was steadily growing brighter, as their impending energy attacks traveled up through their bodies. The hiss turned into an electronic whirring that grew higher and higher pitched until-

Two beams of radioactive plasma lanced forth through the night sky, and two loud _booms_ like miniature thunderclaps shook the advancing Zillas to their cores as the extreme temperatures caused the very air around them to snap outward.

There was not even enough time for the Zillas to scream. Before the sound of the heat rays even reached them, they were engulfed in a huge explosion. Anything within a radius of 200 feet from them was concealed by the firey blast.

The light finally faded after a full ten seconds. When it did, it loked at first like the Zillas had been simply wiped off the face of the earth.

Something landed on the head of a Zilla who had not charged. Moments later, another small object just like it fell. Then another. And another, coming more quickly this time.

Soon, the charred remains of the deceased Zillas were falling from the sky like hail.

The Zillas looked up, down, around, everywhere; there was always a smoking piece of flesh, muscle, or bone in front of them.

There was a short moment where nobody moved.

Then everybody moved at once.


	18. Chapter 18

A/N: Finally, Chapter 18 is up! Before I get on with it, though, one quick thing to say. One of my reviewers for the last chapter, **ZillaPWNS**, accused last chapter of being biased and unrealistic. I actually totally agree, but that was how the chapter was supposed to be. The rest of the battle won't go so well for our heroes. Trust me, I've tried to make this chapter much more to your liking, **ZillaPWNS**. I appreciate and respect every one of my reviewers.

Now, on with the story!

* * *

**Chapter 18**

The _Gotengo_ shot forward like a torpedo. Godzilla charged. Minya covered his eyes and ducked behind him. The Zillas threw their heads forward.

Godzilla expected another chorus of roars. Instead, he received an incredibly strong burning sensation throughout the entire front side of his scaly body as a blast of flame issued from each of the reptilian mouths in front of him. More from surprise than anything, the King of the Monsters fell to his knees.

A wave of shame swept across the kaiju's mind. The King had just _kneeled_ to those weaker than him. To those who needed an army just to stand up to him. To a throng of _cowards_.

The Zilla nearest to him roared triumphantly. A pair of eyes narrowed. Three rows of fins flashed.

The imposter was rewarded for its arrogance with a face full of radioactive plasma. The next second, it didn't have a face anymore.

Simultaneously, the _Gotengo_ flew in between two layers in the line of Zillas, microphasers spouting from its sides. Three Zillas fell to the ground, their faces scarred.

Godzilla uttered a roar that could clearly be translated to, _Who else wants some?_

The rest of the Zillas in front of him backed away a few steps. That was _much _more like it.

Godzilla walked toward them with a smug air of self-assurance. Even Minya, who deemed it safe enough to leave the sanctuary of his father's backside, seemed less out of place in the scene of a battle.

For every step that Godzilla took, the Zillas backed up with an equally long stride, and the more confident their two opponents became.

Godzilla soon grew bored playing with this new development of caution, however, which manifested itself in another charging up of blue energy. He pointed his jaws at one of his adversaries and fired.

The Zilla leapt sideways. Godzilla's head tried to follow, but it was no use; the kaiju had landed behind one of the few buildings left standing.

* * *

The crew of the _Gotengo_watched with interest.

"You see that, Captain?" said Ozaki. "The Zillas are getting scared."

Captain Gordon shook his head. "No. They're getting smart."

Unfortunately, he couldn't have been more correct. By luring Godzilla and Minya further inland, half a dozen Zillas had silently crept up behind them.

* * *

In sudden contrast to the frightened backing up, a Zilla jumped forward, claws extended. Godzilla flinched, then swung wildly. The monster, however, purposely landed a short ways away, just short of Godzilla's reach, mouth open in threat. As the clawed hand flew by, the imposter grabbed it skillfully in its mouth.

A loud screech ripped from the king's throat. The muscles in the jaws of the Zilla contracted mercilessly, and a sickening _crack_ emanated from Godzilla's hand. Finally, Godzilla summoned the effort to rip his hand from his enemy's maw, but not without several ribbons of grey flesh and a spurt of blood flying free at the same time.

Godzilla punched at the Zilla with his other hand, but the Zilla ducked. Seizing the opportunity, it threw its body forward directly from its ducking position, dorsal fins sticking out like knives. There was a loud _scrape_ as the Zilla used its spines to tear at Godzilla's torso. Three roars shortly followed it: one of satisfaction, one of pain, one of fear.

A quick blast of radiation was sufficient to knock the Zilla back a few hundred meters, but it also kept the King of the Monsters from hearing other, more threatening sounds. Like the sound of six Zillas charging him from behind.

The next thing Godzilla knew, his back was on fire (though he was unsure whether this was because of the pain of the Zillas slamming into him or if his back was literally on fire from their breath) and he was on the ground.

He wasn't sure how long he laid there. All he knew was that when he heard Minya squeak in pain from a whip-lash of one of the Zillas' tail, the only pain he could feel was that of the burning anger in his chest. His eyes snapped open, their orange pupils as firey as ever.

With all his might, Godzilla twisted his body around. His tail swept across the ground so quickly that none of the Zillas had time to avoid it. Each one was knocked off its feet and fell unceremoniously to the ground.

The move propelled Godzilla upward enough for him to land on his feet, from which point he was able to blast the Zilla unfortunate enough to have fallen in front of him. Minya did the same to another, though the beam was not quite strong enough to finish it off. His father's foot coming down on its head, however, was another matter entirely.

Godzilla looked down at his hand. Not to his surprise, most of the damage was gone. He observed the rest of the unhealed skin come back together and refasten itself. Interesting.

He turned to attack another of the grounded Zillas, only to be met with a powerful set of jaws armed with sharp teeth heading directly at his throat.

There was no time to dodge. The Zilla's open maw fastened itself on Godzilla's neck. Godzilla tried to roar loudly, but all that came out was a high-pitched squeak. He swung his arms in random spasms, anything to get the Zilla off. By pure luck, a few of his strikes caught his attacker's chest, causing several trios of bloody gashes.

The Zilla stubbornly refused to let more it held on, the deeper its fangs sank into Godzilla's flesh. Small lines of blood began to run down the sides of the wound. Seconds passed, and the blood flow kept on increasing. An alarming strangled noise was issuing from Godzilla. At the same time, though, the Zilla was losing strength from loss of blood.

At last the vicious exchange had to end. Godzilla's fins glowed sky blue. Normally, this would signal a blast of atomic breath from his mouth. And that's what would have happened if there wasn't a hole in his neck.

Instead, the heat beam shot directly out of Godzilla's throat, right in the Zilla's face. This hurt, but it was much better than having that pair of jaws clamped on his neck for all eternity. It probably would have turned out better if the Zilla hadn't spat fire into his open throat as a parting gift. Now Godzilla couldn't even draw relief from gasping for air; when he did, not only did he only receive half as much oxygen, the rest of it rushing out of the opening in his neck, he could feel the sting of the teeth and the flame that had left their marks there.

* * *

"What the-?" cried Ozaki.

The lights of the _Gotengo_ flickered. This normally wouldn't be so catastrophic, except that at the same instant, the ship gave a heart-stopping jolt downward that caused several of the crewmembers to become much less familiar with their seats for a moment than the ceiling.

"What happened?" demanded Captain Gordon.

"I think something hit us, sir," replied the radar technician.

"Ya think?" snapped the Captain.

There was no time for the conversation, if it could be called that, to continue before the ship shuddered again, this time with a sickening _scrape_ ringing through the hull that forced the humans inside to cover their ears in pain.

"Damage report!" yelled Captain Gordon over the noise.

"The hull has lost 26.9 percent of structural integrity, sir," managed the status officer.

Captain Gordon's eyes narrowed. "Lock on to target and train all microphasers at one weak point."

"Sir?"

"Do it!"

"What weak point, sir?"

"I don't know, the head, or the heart, or something like that," said the Captain. "Surprise me."

A computer terminal began to beep insistantly. "Locked on to target. All microphaser guns trained at the head."

"Fire!"

The tactic probably would have worked if five Zillas hadn't jumped out of nowhere in front of different microphasers. While all the energy attacks together probably would have punched straight through the Zillas' thin skin, one lone one wasn't powerful enough for anything other than simple surface tissue damage.

Now the _Gotengo_ had the problem of five thoroughly pissed off daikaiju standing right next to it in attack position.

"Quick, to the right!" ordered Captain Gordon. The jets of the warship flared and propelled it's metal body directly away from the Zillas... and straight into another that used the opportunity to seize the drill in its mouth.

"Activate the drill!" commanded the Captain.

The drill tried to spin, but the Zilla's jaws did not yield. They held on so tightly that the drill wouldn't budge an inch.

The _Gotengo_, however, was another story.

* * *

Another Zilla came at Godzilla, roaring in challenge. While he longed to end its twisted existance with a heat ray, the inclination was out of the question. If he did, it would burst out of his throat, it would hit lower than he aimed, perhaps hitting the ground and missing entirely, he would be in even more pain there than he already was, and his regeneration would be further delayed by the plasma as it opened the hole in his neck wider.

Instead, he lowered his head and launched himself forward, meeting his enemy head-on in a midair headbutt that jarred both of their skulls. In a somewhat disturbing display of similarity, the kaiju both shook their heads in the same manner of a dog that has just been hosed down to try to clear away the unpleasant tingling that served as a reminder of the impact.

Godzilla felt out of breath. He had to inhale twice as often as normal to sustain the demands of his lungs, and even then he began to feel lightheaded. He continued to shake his head, anything to try to summon some kind of plan. The dizziness was making it hard to think.

Godzilla was spared the ordeal of coming up with another unexpected way to fight the Zilla, however, by Minya's blast of plasma that tore through the imposter's fleshy neck.

* * *

"S_t_o_p_ t_h_e _d_r_i_l_l_! _S_t_o_p _t_h_e_ d_r_i_l_l" screamed Captain Gordon, his voice warbling. The other crewmembers hardly heard him, however, as they were all screaming just as loudly.

The _Gotengo_, the EDF's most prized warship, responsible for the demise of dozens of kaiju and indirectly saving the world, was spinning around faster then a top.

Ozaki alone had managed to get a good enough grip on his chair fast enough not to tumble out of it when the ship began to move. The rest of the crew, however, were not blessed with mutant reflexes, and now found themselves tumbling all over the place, unsure of what was up and what was down, whether they were on the ceiling or the floor, or even if the ceiling and the floor could keep their respective titles once they were reversed, making the ceiling the floor and the floor the ceiling, although the next instant the ceiling would be the ceiling and the floor would be the floor again.

Ozaki called upon his kaiser abilities. Slowly, the energy he had first felt that night of the Xilian invasion began to bubble up inside him like an expanding cauldron of boiling liquid.

He didn't need to muster up very much of it. Within one second, there was enough. Even still, he could faintly sense his surroundings, even with his eyes closed.

Where was it, where was it? Ah, there it was. Ozaki could almost see the drill button in front of him. With an almost imperceptible gesture of his finger, his will reached through the air and pushed the little button down.

The _Gotengo_ slowed, slowed, stopped.

"Back to your stations!" barked Captain Gordon with incredible steadiness in his voice. The rest of the crew, Ozaki excluded, were not as unshaken. Several threw up, and most who didn't had already done so when the ship was still spinning. They were all dizzy, and many tripped over their seats or each other as they either crawled or limped back.

"Fire maser!"

Ozaki thumbed the firing button.

* * *

Outside the ship, the Zilla was shaking the drill in its mouth like a vicious wild animal shaking the last life out of its captured prey.

The drill began to glow orange. The Zilla was smart enough to know that this wasn't a good sign. Or perhaps it felt the heat passing through its body. Either way, it hastily let go and jumped away right before the maser fired.

The amplified beam of microwave radiation shot forward. It kept going and going, until it hit-

* * *

There was moment of silence in the _Gotengo_'s control room.

"...sir?" said Ozaki tentatively.

"Yes?" asked Captain Gordon.

"That was Tokyo Tower we just hit, wasn't it?"

"Uh huh."

Another moment of silence.

Then they both slapped their hands over their faces.

* * *

_Thud-thuds_manifested themselves to Godzilla's left and right. A Zilla was running at him from each side. He tensed himself, ready to deal with their forward leaps that they employed so often. To his surprise, each one suddenly slowed down a bit and clawed at the earth. Within seconds, 180 total meters of scales and spikes had disappeared, two gaping holes in the ground taking their place.

Godzilla looked around, trying to find some sign of where the two kaiju were.

A sudden, sharp pain shot through the end of the King's tail. With a short roar of surprise, he wheeled around. The Zilla had silently stuck its head out of the ground as if it were water and fastened its jaws on the nearest bitable part of Godzilla's body: the tail tip.

Godzilla still couldn't dislodge his tormentor with his breath, although his neck was almost healed. He couldn't take the chance of the plasma breaking through the thin layer of skin that had only just grown over it. If it did, he would have to start over. With a surprisingly sudden twist of his gargantuan body, he tried to forcibly tear his tail out of the Zilla's mouth. Its grip was too strong, however, and the King of the Monster's own swing knocked him off his feet. And on top of that, his tail was still in the middle of the Zilla's jaws, which were getting tighter by the second.

Speaking of being on top of things...

The ground shook as if an earthquake was happening. Dirt and rubble were thrown into the sky as if by an explosion. It travelled up and up, until it reached its peak, hung motionless in the air for a moment, then fell. There was so much of it that Godzilla didn't even notice that a kaiju was inside it until its two feet crashed upon his chest, knocking what little wind he had left out of him.

The Zilla viciously clawed at Godzilla's temporarily vulnerable face and neck. Tiny pieces of grey skin went flying into the air like flies disturbed from their sideways rest on a wall, with droplets of blood chasing after them. The only good thing was that Godzilla's neck was fully healed by this time, so it didn't open back up.

But that could be easily fixed.

Godzilla wasn't about to let that happen. His spines began glow sky blue, slowly at first, but gaining brightness by the second. A high-pitched hum came from them.

The Zilla only had time to widen its eyes in realization when it first noticed that the inside of its prey's mouth was shining at him through double rows of sharp teeth.

The atomic breath ripped the Zilla into two smoking pieces that flew an unknown distance until assumedly coming to a rest somewhere over the horizon line.

The beam was still going. Godzilla aimed his head downward to his tail. The far side of the heat ray accidentally skimmed his tail, but it was well worth the screech of pain and feeling of relief from several dozen teeth being pulled out of the tip. The sight of the headless Zilla partially sticking out of the ground once the explosion was over helped as well.

The King of the Monsters made his way to his feet. He took the time to comfort the thoroughly terrified Minya for a moment before looking around. While he had killed quite a few Zillas, a great many more remained. He wasn't even halfway done. Not even close.

The ache of exhaustion was beginning to take their toll on his muscles. Even with Minya and the _Gotengo _as allies, this was a battle he wouldn't be able to win. Not without more help.

Godzilla got an answer.

It was barely audible at first: a high-pitched sound that was reminiscent of a harsh exhale of some great beast through large teeth that caused it to continually change frequency so that the picture of something spinning quickly was forced into the mind's eye. Gradually, it got louder.

Godzilla turned his gaze towards the direction of the noise. He made out a tiny point of pale light near the ground in the direction of the other side of the city. As he watched, it came closer until it was no longer solid light, but a dark, round shape visible for only a fraction of a second before the white light came across it, then retreating again.

Godzilla assumed a battle position. This thing flying towards him, whatever it was, gave out a definite aura of menace.

The object was now within a thousand meters of Godzilla. Now it was close enough for him to see that it was spinning almost too rapidly for his eyes to keep track of. The lights, for he could now tell that there was more than one, appeared to be openings of some sort, which emitted a thick cloud of smoke and flame.

It was now heading for a group of about a half-dozen Zillas gathered closely together. They watched it warily. It suddenly came to a halt only three hundred meters away, still spinning as quickly as ever. Before the Zillas could do anything, it shot forward at an incredible speed, knocking them away like bowling pins.

The flying object took no hesitation to fly over to another Zilla, who had witnessed the entire spectacle and didn't intend to be next. It turned heel and sprinted as fast as it could away.

It wasn't fast enough. The light from the holes was momentarily extinguished, then flared full-force straight downward onto the Zilla. Godzila couldn't see what happened amidst all the smoke, but judging by the elephant-like bellow that sounded from it, he assumed the Zilla had been fried.

The jets abruptly stopped spewing exhaust, and the object started to fall. Godzilla was sure it would crash into the ground. To his immense surprise, something dark poked itself out of each of the five holes. When it hit the ground, it stayed perfectly balanced on the two bottom protrusions.

It took Godzilla a moment to realize the things sticking out of the object were _body parts._ The bottom two were the legs, which correspondingly meant that the two on top were arms. Yellowish claws tipped the feet and hands, and both of its elbows had a short but deadly-looking spike sticking out at a right angle.

The fifth opening was home to the thing's head. The face bore a slight resemblance to Godzilla's, but only in the same way the Zillas' did. It was shorter and more compact. A row of thin spines ran from the top of the head down to the short neck and into the hole. Sharp teeth stuck out even though the mouth was closed, including two large tusks that stuck out so far upward that they were higher than its dark eyes.

The rest of its body was made up of bony plates. When it moved, the plates on its back seemed to shift around to match the movement, while those on the front were immobile.

Godzilla took in this new kaiju with uneasy confusion.

_Friend or foe?_ wondered the King of the Monsters.

He roared, but not in the usual manner. While loud and no doubt frightening to those crowds of cowardly Zillas, this roar was neither a greeting nor a warning, but something in between. Something to ask what the new creature was.

The monster roared back, and the sound surprised Godzilla. It sounded almost exactly like his own roar back when everything, the trees and the Things, seemed so much smaller. Like the cry he had given at the beach when the tan Things' aquatic monsters were attacking him.

Godzilla nodded. The kaiju's message was clear; it was a friend.

The moment was rudely interrupted by a roar of challenge from one of the many Zillas running at the two monsters.

Godzilla and Gamera roared back.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

"Gamera!" cried Ozaki. "I thought he was dead!"

Indeed, many of the crew members were actually rubbing their eyes to make sure that the 80 meter tall construction of shell, scales, and fangs wasn't mearly a hallucination brought about by false hope.

"Apparently not," said Captain Gordon, almost cracking a smile.

"But I don't understand," persisted Ozaki. "He was so beat up after he defeated all those Gyaos back in 1999. Both of his arms were missing and everything. And now look. He's as good as new!"

This time, Captain Gordon did smile, and at the same time gave the mutant an incredulous look. "Do you mean to tell me that after spending your entire life watching hundred meter tall creatures decimate some of mankind's greatest architectural achievements as if they were made of building blocks before you kill them and thwarting a planetray invasion by hostile aliens from another galaxy, this kind of thing _still_ surprises you?"

Ozaki didn't reply.

* * *

A faint mist came from Gamera's mouth as he deeply growled at the charging Zillas, as though power built up inside him over the years was trying to escape in any way possible. While Minya was staring at this new arrival with obvious unease, Godzilla acted like he had been there the whole battle, only that he seemed to be pondering what his ally could do.

The ten or so Zillas running at them suddenly skidded to a halt, heads thrust out as far as possible. It soon became apparent why as a blast of fire issued from each set of jaws - directly at Gamera. No physical attacks this time. Not yet, at least. They had learned by this time that taking chances with unknown kaiju at close quarters was likely to earn you a painful death.

The wall of fire was sufficient enough to completely obscure the gargantuan terrapin's body from view. From the center of the flames came a roar from Gamera, yet not what the Zillas expected. Not a dying scream, nor even a simple cry of pain: just a roar.

The mass of fire began to swirl around in an eliptical motion, as if an invisible tornado was sucking it all up. As it continued, some of the top of it began to travel downwards, while the opposite was happening with those at the bottom. Soon, the flames were all concentrated in one circular line, revealing a completely intact Gamera at the center, his right hand spinning negligently around in perfect sync with the flaming ring.

The Zillas backed up a few steps. The ability to manipulate fire was beyond their foresight or comprehension.

Gamera's hand began to move faster, the firey circle speeding up in reply. Faster and faster it moved, until-

The Guardian of the Universe swung his arm in a wide arc in the direction of the now thoroughly unnerved Zillas, sending the fire on a similar path. The wall of flame shot forward too quickly for all but three of the kaiju to dodge; the rest were reduced instantly to a scattered pile of ash and blacked bones.

Gamera barely paused before slowly parting his jaws, revealing that the back of his throat was glowing a bright orange. There was also a low-pitched _creak_ emanating from the source of the menacing light, like an old chest buried underground centuries ago slowly being opened. The Zillas had been fighting Godzilla long enough to tell that this was not a good sign.

Then a loud _boom_ rippled through the air as a concentrated ball of plasma shot out of Gamera's open jaws like a cannonball. The Zilla that the attack was aimed at had anticipated something of the sort, so it was able to jump over it just in time. It's brother, who had been unfortunate enough to be standing behind it at the time, wasn't so lucky. It exploded into burning pieces of seared tissue that rained down over a radius of 300 meters.

The first Zilla was still in the air, now flying right at Gamera. With astonishing speed, the latter charged up another plasma ball and fired, catching its target accurately in midair and causing a similar result to what happened two seconds earlier.

The turtle turned its attention to the final Zilla, which had used the two distractions that were its brothers to rapidly close the distance between itself and Gamera until it was less than one bodylength away. The Guardian sidestepped at exactly the right moment, then caught the Zilla's neck in its mouth. Before the stunned kaiju could react, Gamera bit down full-force, sending his tusks directly through its esophagus.

With the Zilla's life went any doubts in the minds of both the humans and Godzilla about whether Gamera could handle the situation.

* * *

Minya, as usual, was huddled close to his father when he saw the Zilla coming. He squeaked and tugged at Godzilla's arm. His efforts, however, were fruitless, as Godzilla's was attention was on another Zilla he was trying to hit with a heat beam. Minya tried crying out louder; no response.

By this time, the Zilla was within 500 meters, and quickly lessening that number. Minya was now in a state of full-blown panic, jumping up and down and slapping his father's sides wildly. The Zilla bent down to Minya's height as it ran, saliva dripping from its glittering teeth.

Minya felt a sudden pain shoot from the tip of his tail. He opened his mouth to cry out in pain; instead, a more powerful plasma beam than he had ever fired before blasted from his mouth. The Zilla gave a short screech of surprise before its entire head was swiftly converted to several scattered molecules floating around in the air.

Minya took a moment to try to puzzle out what had just happened before he looked down at his tail. He did it just in time to catch a quick glimpse of his father's foot raising itself off. He raised his gaze up to his father questionably. Godzilla wasn't looking back down at him, but he was wearing the closest thing to a smile his dinosaurian facial muscles could manage.

With a mental shrug that could be translated to, _Cool_, Minya resumed his previous position, albeit slightly farther away for more than one reason.

* * *

Godzilla caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned towards it to be greeted by the sight of a large grey blur flying directly at him. Out of pure reflex, he spun around, his tail batting it to the side. The Zilla sailed in the direction of Gamera, who brought his elbow down swiftly onto the Zilla's head, slamming it into the ground. The spike on his elbow punched a neat hole straight through the kaiju's skull and into its brain.

Gamera's victory was short-lived, however, as yet another Zilla came up behind him and rammed straight into his back. Gamera tried to catch himself in mid-fall by twisting around, but his heavy shell was made solely for protection. As such, these sorts of quick movements were impossible to perform with ease, much less any grace. All the Guardian of the Universe succeeded in doing was landing on his back instead of his stomach.

Like vultures flocking to a carcass, half a dozen other Zillas appeared out of nowhere to take advantage of the Gamera's current state of immobilization. They targeted the arms, legs, and head immediately. Their jaws, eager for the taste of blood, snapped down to find - thin air.

Gamera may have been about five hundred times the size as was standard, but he was still a turtle. And all turtles share a pivot joint with the top and bottom parts of the shell. All one needs to do is rotate it's elbow in towards it's neck, and the entire limb disappears inside the shell. As many different varieties of kaiju and wild animals alike as there were, none else had vanishing body parts.

The Zillas were figuring this information out one step at a time. Many tried reaching their snouts into the empty holes. No luck; the holes were too small. Normally they would try breathing fire into them to solve this kind of problem, but they had witnessed the spectacle of Gamera's reaction to such an assault.

One of them walked over to the frontal area and tried to reach the head, which couldn't retract quite as much. The creature was rewarded for it's inquisitiveness with instant decapitation by hot plasma.

Unable to reach into the shell, the Zillas tried a more direct method; completely breaking it open. One stepped on top and started jumping up and down, pressing the shell into the ground. With only enough room up there for one, the others attacked it any physical way imaginable. A chorus of deafening _scrapes_ ripped through the air as they tried slashing at it with their claws.

One lost patience, wedged its jaws around the corner of the shell, and bit down as hard as it could. There was a loud _crack_, but not from the shell. One of the Zilla's teeth had broken off at the base of the crown. The kaiju bellowed in agony.

The Zillas, unbeknownst to them, faced an even greater and more frustrating challenge of the turtle anatomy than the disappearing shoulder, one that had foiled all efforts of some of the mightiest predatory animals for over 215 million years: how to crack a turtle.

With the exceptions of the leatherback and soft-shelled turtle, any chelonian shell has three layers. The first and outermost part of this defense is a layer whose thinness is surpassed greatly by its durability. It is made up of dead skin and has a consistancy similar to a exceptionally hard specimen of human fingernail material. Like fingernails, there are no nerves, blood vessels, or soft tissues to damage, and it constantly regenerates itself. The tiny scratches from the Zillas' teeth and claws did no permanent damage.

The next layer is formed by a layer of curved plates of bone on top and flat ones on bottom. The two sections of the shell meet at a zone of especially strong bone on the left and right sides of the shell. The smooth shape of the shell doesn't provide any protrusions to snap off, and the bridge between the top and bottom reinforces the whole layer.

The final piece of the turtle shell is the most ingenious result of millenia upon millenia of the Lord's process of shaping living things to adapt to changes in the world around them, known by some, through variations in definition, as evolution. Inside the turtle's skeleton itself is a set of long shafts that curve over a wide area to reach all parts of the bony shell plates, connected to a central rod of bone. The shafts are the turle's ribs, which are attached to the backbone. Unlike any other creature, the ribs and backbone are fused immovably to the rest of the shell, and this is what gives it it's infamous property of being so strong and rigid that it's almost entirely impossible to crack. No living being before or since has ever had such an effective defensive system.

The Zillas could vaguely remember trying unsuccessfully to eat sea turtles when they were still hatchlings. However, this sense of frustration had been all but forgotten after they grew big enough to simply swallow the turtles whole. This method, obviously, was of no help to them this time.

The Zillas, of course, had no way of knowing the details of this mechanism, nor did they care. The only thing that mattered at the moment was to bring death to the enemy. _Bite_, _slash_, and _kill_ were the only action-provoking thoughts, and they didn't help at all.

Suddenly, smoke and flame spewed out of the leg holes, scorching the ankles of several Zillas. They hurriedly jumped away from Gamera. All but one. The Zilla on top was in too much of a frenzy to notice the smoke, not helped by the fact that both of his eyes still had shards of glass stuck in them. It wasn't until the shell began to spin that it realized that its comrades were all staring back at him and his unwilling ride from a much safer position.

By this time, the shell was now spinning so fast that the Zilla would not be able to keep standing there unaided. He couldn't jump off, otherwise the shell's motion would twist his body around just as he kicked off, which would ultimately result in, more likely than not, the breaking of half of its ribs.

Instead, it hunched down, wrapped its tail as securely around the rest of its body as it could, and grabbed onto the edge of the shell. Gamera continued to pick up speed, making it harder and harder for the Zilla to keep its grip. Before long, the G-force being exerted on the kaiju's body was twice as much as any roller coaster designed by human beings, and it only kept increasing. The Zilla soon found his tail being slowly pulled away from his body, shortly followed by its legs and arms so that its body was stretched out to its full length. The edge of his tail being burned by the jets of fire, the Zilla was gradually loosing his grip on the terrapin. As much as it tried to resist, there was nothing it could do to but watch its fingers, one by one, slide off the edge of the shell.

The Zilla was thrown so far that it disappeared from the view of the others before it even hit the ground.

The rest of them took a quick look at the still flying Gamera, then spun around and bolted in the opposite direction. With all they had just experienced, they all decided it was a better idea for the moment to try their luck with the King than the Guardian.

* * *

A/N: Sorry in advance to the fans of Zilla who are reading this for doing basically the same thing I did with Chapter 17. But with Godzilla suddenly getting a new ally, the situation had to improve a little. And with said ally being Gamera, it had to improve a lot. The same principles work in his favor that worked for Godzilla back in Chapter 17: the Zillas not knowing how to best attack him, the stormtrooper effect, etc. Besides, Gamera's been storing up energy for about five years, so of course he'll fight very well. But once he starts getting exhausted...


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

Godzilla was locked in hand-to-hand combat with a particularly stubborn Zilla. While the latter's skin was much weaker, its claws were also much sharper and its blows came about twice as fast. It was a bit less strong, however, which caused the two to be pretty evenly matched.

Godzilla swiped at the Zilla's head. It ducked quickly, only for Godzilla's other hand to rake its face. The kaiju gave a screech of pain as blood poured out of the wound. It clawed at Godzilla's lower body area with animalistic ferocity. Godzilla, ignoring the pain, kicked the Zilla in the stomach, forcibly expelling all the air in the Zilla's lungs. The Zilla took a desperate gulp of air, the exhallation manifesting itself in a point-blank blast of fire.

Godzilla shook off the stinging feeling and caught the Zilla in an uppercut that knocked it off its feet. He quickly charged up a heat beam and fired. The Zilla barely managed to avoid it by rolling to the side. It looked up just in time to view the sight of Godzilla's foot rising high into the air before bringing it down on its face. There was a sound oddly reminiscent of someone biting into a tortilla chip, but quite a bit louder.

A quick scan of the area showed no immediate targets. Godzilla heard a distant and familiar _boom_ behind him. He turned around, only to be met by the sight of ten Zillas directly in front of him.

Before he could so much as roar in surprise, a long tail caught the right side of his face, and he was the one falling to the ground. Unlike the Zilla he had just killed, however, he wasn't quick enough to evade the five or so flame attacks his adversaries sent his way.

Knowing full well that the next thing the Zillas would try to do was swarm all over him, Godzilla swung his tail blindly along the ground, hoping to trip at least a few of them. He felt his tail connect with two pairs of ankles, followed by two loud _cracks_ as their ankles broke and two louder _thumps _as they hit the ground, but that was all he received.

Godzilla felt something slam into his chest, hard, and at the same time heard a sickening _crack_ from the same general area. When the pressure didn't subside, he looked up to find that a Zilla was on top of him. It had probably jumped over his tail and used the opportunity to pounce on him.

The Zilla lunged down and sank his teeth deeply into his neck. Godzilla tried to roar, only to find that the effort met his windpipe and halted. He reached up to claw wildly at the Zilla's neck. Although he managed a few glancing blows, the Zilla's jaws remained tightly clamped on his throat. Even as he battled this Zilla, he felt others find their own grips on his other body parts. Godzilla soon found himself thrashing his entire body around like a fish out of water.

It briefly occured to him that Minya might help somehow, but a steady chorus of warbling cries to his right told him that his son was preoccupied with a Zilla or two himself. How he hadn't noticed this before caused him a short moment of puzzlement, as his son was making a racket fit for a stadium full of teenage girls at a Keith Urban concert, but the intense pain and the roars from his own group of attackers had probably just blocked it out. Speaking of which...

A loud _boom_ rippled through the air that Godzilla could actually feel instead of simply hearing, followed closely by another. A brilliant orange flash momentarily blinded him and came very close to scorching his face, but it was well worth the abrupt absence of the Zilla's weight and teeth on their corresponding parts of his body. He heard and felt another explosion to his right, along with a Zilla's dying scream.

Minya, it seemed, wasted little time in coming to his father's aid, as Godzilla made out something bright and blue hit the general area near his right leg, where the pain was still flowing keenly. As before, the pain instantly decreased.

That was about all the assistance he required. Godzilla swung his left arm, which had been randomly yet mercifully spared of becoming a makeshift chew toy, across his body, where a Zilla had gotten a loose but effective hold on his right wrist. Instead of clawing or punching the Zilla in the face, though, he actually stuck his hand up the Zilla's throat.

Ignoring the kaiju's surprised squeaks, he felt and groped around until he found something long, moist, and squishy. He grabbed this new apparition and yanked back as hard as he could. A sound horribly similar to someone tearing up a wet piece of paper ripped through the air as the Zilla's tongue came free. Blood and deafening screeches spouted from the Zilla's mouth like a water fountain from Hell as its resolution snapped and it ran off somewhere.

Confident that his neck was sufficiently healed by now, Godzilla looked up to assess how much of a charge he would need to keep his beam going long enough to at least get the remaining Zillas off him. He inadvertantly caught a glimpse of Gamera fighting a few Zillas a respectable distance away as he did so. Well, that explained where the orange plasma balls came from. Godzilla felt a quick surge of affection for the Guardian - or as close to such an emotion as a 100 meter tall dinosaur could achieve. He quickly recomposed himself and focused on summoning the radioactive energies inside him for a heat ray.

For a few seconds, he felt the electric warmth sweep up his body length until collecting in his mouth. He noted, though, that his neck and chest hurt a bit as it passed by. Thankfully, it was not enough to break through the skin, though this didn't change the now obvious fact that one of his ribs had broken when the Zilla landed on him. He pointed his head at the Zilla farthest to his left and fired.

To his surprise, the Zilla actually leaped backwards just before the ray of plasma hit it. Godzilla could only assume that it had in fact been watching him the whole time. The rest, however, didn't seem to be noticing, and a quick horizontal sweep of his head was enough to dislodge them all.

Godzilla hastily scrambled to his feet, and not a moment too soon; the Zilla that had just dodged his attack was coming back for more. At exactly the right moment, Godzilla took a left-handed punch at the Zilla's head, since his right hand was only starting to close itself up. As a result, the punch wasn't quite as powerful as it could have been, though still sufficient to knock the Zilla to the ground.

Godzilla could tell that he needed to save as little time as possible with this Zilla, because the others were just now starting to get to their feet. His solution: slamming his tail again and again on the downed Zilla's head until he heard the skull crack while simultaneously shooting a fully charged heat beam at the others.

To put it simply, it worked.

As the singed chunks of Zilla meat were still falling from the sky, Godzilla, ignoring his own blood-soaked form, checked to see what condition Minya was in. It wasn't good; several trios of bright red lines painted his son's chest and stomach. Minya had no dount realized the need to conserve his strength, hence the fact that he had only used his plasma blast once.

True, like his father, Minya had regenerative powers, but they were much slower. Like the strength of his atomic breath, that power would develop with age. At least the plasma energy was too dispersed at the location of the wounds for it to burst out them; that may well have killed him. Still, it looked like Minya would have to sit out the rest of the battle as best he could.

Godzilla turned again to see how Gamera was fairing - and was shocked by what he saw.

* * *

Gamera landed and looked around to confirm that no other Zillas had the brilliant idea of taking him on. Gamera would have smiled, had his Atlantean creators given him a mammalian set of facial muscles instead of adhering to those of a turtle, when he saw that the closest Zillas were the ones still running away from him. His smugness was swiftly replaced by the realization that the Zillas were all heading straight towards Godzilla, who was too busy fighting yet another Zilla to notice. Gamera opened his mouth, threw his head back, and-

The ground beneath him erupted, while at the same time pain shot up his legs from the soles of his feet. The plasma ball briefly illuminated the dark clouds orange as it flew harmlessly into the night sky.

Still in the air, Gamera felt the agony in his right leg suddenly magnify tenfold, and in more than one way; in the middle was the same type of sharpness that his feet were even now still experiencing, a crushing pressure in the same area was only making it worse, and his thigh felt like it was about to be ripped from its socket as his body inexplicably changed direction.

It wasn't until after he hit the ground and shook off the dizziness enough to see a Zilla with a viscous green liquid - Gamera's blood - dripping from its mouth and dorsal fins standing next to a large hole in the ground that hadn't been there before did he realize what had just happened.

The Zilla had burrowed underneath Gamera, who of course had no way of knowing of this ability, then jumped up through the earth itself. It's spines were what had stabbed his feet. The Zilla had then grabbed Gamera's leg in its mouth, swung him 270 degrees, and completed the move by slamming him into the ground.

Gamera began to charge up another plasma ball when he detected movement out of the corner of his eye. Disregarding the fact that the Zilla was now charging him, he turned his head to the left to be met with the sight of Godzilla and Minya, lying side-by-side, flat on their backs with Zillas all over them.

The plasma energies inside him were fully charged, not just for one, but for two blasts, and Gamera had a split-second decision to make: use them to save his allies, or himself.

Gamera took aim at Godzilla and shot the ball of plasma from his mouth, then did the same to Minya.

The delay caused by his actions gave the Zilla just enough time to bite down on Gamera's already seriously injured right leg. Despite the pain that lanced up from the appendage, he knew that this was the only way.

He_ could_ have saved himself with the plasma balls, but both Godzilla and Minya were already in a far worse situation than himself, and the latter was almost completely unequipped to be fighting at all, let alone have two fully-grown kaiju fighting him at once. True, he could have finished off his Zilla and then helped his allies, but by then the Zillas could have killed one or both of them.

He _could_ have tucked his limbs into his shell, but that would have made his head, which needed to stay out of the shell so he could aim his attacks, an obvious and easy target, so instead he chose the lesser of two evils.

And he _could_ have simply ignored the fact that there was a battle going on at all, and continued slumbering peacefully at the bottom of the sea... but where would the fun be in that?

So when the Zilla sharply snapped its neck back, pulling a very large portion of the flesh on his leg and sending green blood fountaining into the air, Gamera was proud of his decisions.

He craned his neck as far forward as he could manage, then let loose another plasma ball. The edge of his shell assured that he didn't get a direct hit at this distance, but the attack did manage to skim the Zilla, which bought him just enough time to stand back up. He banished the feeling of pain in his right leg, which he had learned to do long before this battle. A very useful trick, especially because the Zilla had ripped off so much of his leg meat that his bones and tendons were clearly visible.

Two other Zillas had run up beside the one he was fighting as he had gotten up and even helped it up. Gamera had to admit, their teamwork was exceptional. He fearlessly stood before the trio for a moment. The middle one looked at the left one and nodded in a corresponding direction, then did the same to the other. Slowly, methodically, the two Zillas began to walk around him in a semicircle formation.

Gamera, however, did not intend to be surrounded. He quickly charged a plasma ball and shot it at the Zilla to his left. It expertly dodged it by hopping sideways. This gave the other two the opportunity they had been waiting for, and they charged the Guardian. The one in the middle got to him first, and was therefore the one was stabbed in the shoulder by Gamera's elbow spike.

However, that allowed the Zilla to the right to get a firm grip on the turtle's right arm... with its teeth. Gamera, hissing angrily, turned to the direction of this new torment and prepared to fire another plasma ball. A sudden pain gripping his other arm caused him to reflexively turn his head, however, and the plasma escaped his jaws as his head was in the middle of its arc, causing it to miss even the middle Zilla, who was crouching down.

Gamera soon discovered why it was crouching as he experienced the familiar sensation of a fanged mouth clamping down on his leg. This sense of _deja vu_ was completed by the Zilla snapping its neck back again. However, it had a much different result. Before, his leg was already injured, making his flesh there much more prone for... removal. This leg, though, was intact, and the skin there held.

The leg's grip on the ground didn't.

This ultimately resulted in his body being held up by the mouths of three Zillas, and him powerless to do anything about it except tuck his head and right leg into his shell.

_Maybe it would've been better to stay asleep underwater after all,_ he thought.

* * *

Godzilla watched the spectacle in front of him for a moment. Three Zilla were suspending Gamera in the air by his legs, green blood dripping from each one. As he watched, his only leg that wasn't being bitten - though it did look seriously injured - withdrew into the shell, along with the head. Smoke and flame shot from the former, and the shell began to slowly move forward in the air.

The Zillas tightened their grips and dug their heels into the ground, but it was no use; the shell kept moving. The stubborn kaiju, however, refused to let go, so the scene shifted a bit from horrible to comical.

Still, no matter how funny it was to see the Zillas struggling like this, Gamera was still in pain, and Godzilla couldn't let that go on unabated. With a roar, he ran after Gamera and his attackers.

It wasn't easy to get there. For one thing, Godzilla wasn't really built for running in the first place. For another, do to either the Zillas tugging their captive or Gamera somehow trying to shake them off, the shell would suddenly and seemingly randomly change direction. At last he reached the kaiju entanglement. Still running, Godzilla's fins and mouth flared blue, signalling the blast of nuclear breath that dislodged the Zilla's mouth from Gamera's arm... and its head from the rest of its body.

The shell dipped at an angle when the Zilla let go, but the arm quickly disappeared into the shell and was replaced by exhaust. Now the two Zillas on the other side were being pushed back. They had to run backwards just to keep their balance. Godzilla caught up to them and promptly relieved them of their need to keep their balance with a tail sweep that knocked them both off their feet. They both roared in anguish, finally letting go of Gamera in the process.

The airborne shell moved to the side a little before regaining its poise and activating the remaining two jets. It regained its customary spin, the familiar high-pitched grating noise pounding against Godzilla's ears. As he watched, the shell tipped its side downwards until it was spinning perpendicular to the ground. It paused for a short moment, then slammed into the two Zillas.

The edge of the shell was as sharp as a razor, and it ripped through the Zillas' torsos with ease. Blood fanned out with each spin before the jets of fire burned the wounds shut, then were opened again by the edge of the shell. Their dying screams, however, only stopped when the life abandoned them.

Gamera landed after he was sure they were dead and observed his wounds. The Zillas' teeth had cut deep into each of his limbs, and there was so much blood flowing out of each that, from a distance, one might have thought that was their actual color. Small strips of flesh hung limply from the sides, which Gamera pulled off without so much as a grunt. Godzilla marveled at the Guardian's endurance.

A sudden noise caused both of them to turn around.

It was Minya.

He was screaming.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

Hot fury leapt into existence like an angry flame when the King of the Monsters heard his son crying out in pain. For the Zillas to attack not only a kaiju so small and unable to defend itself, but for them to do it when it was _injured_, when it had no one to _protect_ it... Due in part to the radioctive energies inside him, Godzilla's blood literally boiled at the very idea.

Kaiju..._vultures_ was more like it.

So it was that he ran faster than he ever had before, straight to the place the pained noises were coming from. He couldn't see what was happening, because of the damaged buildings in the way. There was no pause whatsoever as his muscular legs propelled him forward. The great, orange eyes didn't even blink as he ran directly into and through a building, chunks of concrete large and small crumbling away at his touch.

As the rubble cleared Godzilla's vision, he spotted the backside of a Zilla obscuring a plump, bright green body. No burst of radioactive fire shot forth to blast the creature out of existence this time. This Zilla would pay for what it had done, and it would do it with blood.

* * *

The Zilla was feeling reasonably pleased with itself. He had seen the little cretin kill several of his brothers alongside that other, larger one that was the source of all this trouble. Now its leg was in the Zilla's mouth, and soon it would no longer be attached to its body.

Its only regret was that he couldn't actually eat the leg, nor the screaming thing that it came from. The taste was sour, unpleasant. It would feel good to have more of those delicious little swimmy things once this was over.

Then, something sharp bit into the end of its tail and pulled, hard. In its surprise, the Zilla dropped the little thing's leg. It felt its stomach fly forward into its throat as the world around him spun. Before it could figure out what was happening, it experienced far more pain as its head collided with one of the big grey rectangles that dotted the landscape for some reason.

Everything was blurry for a few moments as the Zilla laid on the ground, momentarily too stunned to do anything. It shook its head to clear its vision, and was greeted by the sight of the larger monster looking down at him with its burning eyes.

The kaiju pounced on the Zilla, which bellowed in agony as it felt its left leg and pelvis snap under the attacker's weight. It didn't hesitate at all before bending down and thrusting all the claws of its hand into the Zilla's gut. Then it pulled back its arm sharply so that the size of the wound was instantly quadrupled.

At this point, the Zilla's self-preservation instincts kicked in. With a deep breath, it spat fire into the monster's face. If the kaiju even noticed, however, it gave no sign, instead continuing its vicious attack on the Zilla.

The creature's other arm plunged into the bloody gash, and pure agony followed it. It was so intense that the Zilla lost all sense of what was going on. Whether it was being clawed or punched, whether that clawed hand was still inside it anyway, it had no idea. It couldn't feel his own arms thrashing about, trying desperately to slash the attacker, and occasionally doing so, but with no effect. It couldn't feel its own innards being forcibly torn out, nor the droplets of blood that painted its screaming face.

It couldn't even feel the monster's foot pin his body to the ground, its right hand grab its broken left leg, or its fanged mouth fasten around its neck just before both were yanked upward at the same time, and a loud _snap_ from the Zilla's backbone made everything go black.

* * *

Godzilla took a few seconds to catch his breath, blood dripping from his teeth and claws onto the body of the lifeless Zilla. Not that it mattered much; there was so much blood that only a very small percent of the body's outer surface area was clean. The viscera was ripped open for all to see, the internal organs either not in the place they should be or else simply missing entirely.

Gamera was only just arriving, who looked at the gory scene in front of him impassively. Godzilla noticed that although the blood flow had stopped, the bites on his arms and legs hadn't seemed to heal. He gave the turtle a grunt of acknowledgement before he turned back to check what damage the Zilla had done to Minya.

It turned out that his son's screams had more to do with alerting Godzilla than being hurt. The damage to his leg wasn't very serious, though that probably would have changed if Godzilla had come much later. The King of the Monsters felt a curious mix of relief and annoyance. If reptiles had sweat glands, he would have wiped what passed for his forehead at that point. He turned around again, resisting the impulse to hit Minya with his tail as he did so.

* * *

"What are they doing?"

The crew of the _Gotengo_ watched as Godzilla and Gamera both stood next to an injured Minya, intimidating but unmoving. Godzilla seemed tired, but otherwise unscathed. Not so with Gamera.

Like Minya, Gamera had regeneration, but it was far from instantaneous. Even by going back into the water so they would heal faster, it took awhile, depending on how serious the injury. Wounds this bad would take several days, perhaps even a week. Rather incredible by the standards of normal living things, sure, but it didn't compare to kaiju like Godzilla.

"They're guarding Minya," said Captain Gordon more to himself than the bridge member.

"Which leaves us to fight the rest of the Zillas..." Ozaki's voice trailed off.

While Godzilla and Gamera had been fighting the Zillas together, the _Gotengo_ had been in the middle of its own battles. The hull, sleek, shiny, and looking completely brand-new when it had launched from the EDF headquarters, was now decorated with a number of dents, scratches, and scorch marks. As if to embellish the overall tarnished appearance, the color had already somehow faded to a dull dark grey.

"Status report," ordered the Captain.

"Readouts show that the main engines will burn out in approximately one hour and twelve minutes, sir. Be advised that flying at an altitude over 200 meters could result in an unintentional backfiring of the jets."

"Sixteen guided missiles left in each firing chamber, sir, ready to fire at will."

"Maser and phaser power cores temporarily overloaded, sir. They should be back online in several minutes."

"Drill fully functional, sir."

"Structural integrity at 64.915 percent, sir, a Damage Level 4."

Captain Gordon was used to fighting under less-than-perfect circumstances. Considering the pounding the _Gotengo_ had taken so far, things could have certainly been much worse. In its last little skirmish, the ship had taken several hundred direct hits from Xilian dogfighters and made it. Captain Gordon could certainly make do with a giant drill, a damaged hull, thirty-two missiles, a few minutes without the maser, phaser, or microphasers, and about an hour until they lost all mobility.

But not if they were the ones fighting an army of kaiju head-on.

"New objective, boys. For the rest of the battle, we divert our efforts to keeping Minya alive while Godzilla and Gamera fight on the front lines."

Despite how much the plan made sense, as necessary and noble as it was, it hurt Captain Gordon on the inside to give the order. There was nothing worse than sitting in the middle of a battle not only not being able to do anything about it, but to know that you had a _choice_ about it.

_No_, he told himself. That wasn't the situation here. He could still affect the battle by wiping out as many Zillas as possible. All he had to do was wait for them to get too close instead of chasing after them himself. Easy.

"Any other ideas?" he asked the bridge at large. A few of the crewmembers looked skeptical. Others, the Captain noted with some disgust, looked relieved to be away from the main battle. Nobody made any objections.

"Good. Take us in, then hover above the monsters. We need to make them understand what we're doing."

The pilot obeyed, and the _Gotengo_ lazily drifted to the place where Minya was leaning against a building. The viewscreen centered on the two senior kaiju, who watched it with, as far as the humans on the ship could tell, curiosity. The warship stopped when it was directly over Minya and hovered there indifferently to whatever else was going on. The crew watched the screen intently for any sign that the monsters comprehended their intentions.

They only had to wait a few seconds. Gamera, who had the most experience dealing with humans in the first place, made a head motion at the _Gotengo_ that looked strikingly like a nod, then lumbered off in the other direction.

Godzilla took the hint (with no nod this time) and began to march the same way as the terrapin. He stopped, turned around, and seemed to look directly at the crew as if there was no screen separating them. Those blazing orange eyes, that had once sent looks of hatred and a wish for death to all human beings, now said plainly, _Good luck_. Then the King turned back and went on his way.

* * *

Only about twenty seconds after Godzilla left, the radar technician reported, "Hostile inbound from three o'clock, sir."

"Turn 90 degrees." The _Gotengo_'s engines flared, and Ozaki felt the front of the ship swing to the right.

He had several doubts about this plan, chief among them that two of the most powerful kaiju in history would probably be better at defending Minya than a half-defeated ship.

Then again, it wasn't Ozaki's place to disagree, not even when Captain Gordon asked plainly for somebody to. That was why he was Captain and Ozaki was Ensign. The two monsters would probably be more needed on the front lines anyway.

Besides, he trusted the Captain's judgement. During the Xilian invasion, when he was cornered by two of their most highly trained soldiers, both armed with laser pistols, he relinquished his only weapon under the pretense that the Xilians had some kind of sense of honor and fight him hand-to-hand (a stupid idea on their part, as the Captain was an expert at several forms of martial arts). They could have just shot him and be done with it, but Captain Gordon made exactly the right decision, and made it through alive.

"Launch two volleys of missiles at my command," said Captain Gordon. "Ready... fire one!"

Missiles leapt from both sides of the _Gotengo_ and raced toward the charging Zilla. Just before they impacted, the kaiju vaulted off the ground, leaving the volley to explode against the ground.

"Fire two!"

More missiles streaked from the warship as the Zilla flew at them. The monster's eyes widened before the missiles collided with it in midair. For a brief moment, the Zilla's body looked like it had simply been replaced by flame. Then a large, burnt object with half of the Zilla's mass blown off its chest soared backwards, thrown the opposite way by the explosion.

Whatever satisfaction the crew got out of that display was immediately destroyed when the ship suddenly jerked up and a loud scraping sound took its merry time torturing everybody's ears. A Zilla appeared on the viewscreen next to a hole in the ground that wasn't there before, as if anyone had any questions as to what had happened.

"We've lost 8.26 percent of the hull integrity, sir," came the damage report. "I'm not sure the superstructure will hold up much longer." Captain Gordon muttered something under his breath that sounded very much, especially to Ozaki's mutant-level hearing, like a curse.

"How much time left on the maser and phaser cores?"

"Fifty-eight seconds and counting, sir," answered Ozaki.

The Captain nodded. "Activate the drill and keep all forward microphasers trained at the head. Prepare to fly forward at my command."

The Zilla growled at the ship as the drill began to spin, and saliva dripped from its jaws in thin ropes. It was obvious that it wanted nothing more than to ravage the _Gotengo_ until it was indistinguishable from aluminum foil, but couldn't because of the possibility of the drill stabbing it in the heart as it did so.

The monster jumped shortly forward, about half the distance between them, and landed with its teeth bared in threat. The warship stayed motionless. The Zilla growled again and pushed back the ground with one foot like an agitated bull. Sniffing every few seconds, it slowly began to walk toward the ship.

"Maser and phaser power cores back online, sir," said Ozaki.

"Wait for it..." Captain Gordon's voice trailer off as the Zilla got closer. A few more seconds passed, and then, "_Accelerate_!"

Fire spewed out the _Gotengo_'s jets, shooting it directly at the Zilla. The kaiju gave a short screech of surprise, but managed to hop back far enough to avoid being impaled. Using the momentum to its advantage, it swung its body around. The tail lashed out and just barely caught enough of the still spinning drill to send the _Gotengo_ spinning to the side.

"Get back on course!" yelled the Captain as soon as they started moving. The ship managed to face the Zilla again just in time to see the Zilla sprinting right at them, its mouth open wide to bite the first part of them it could reach. "Fire microphasers!"

Thankfully, the lock-ons hadn't been shaken off by the kaiju's maneuver, and four narrow blue beams pierced the air. Each one hit the inside of the upper jaw at the exact same time and place, punching straight through the thin tissue and into its brain. The creature stood completely still for one brief moment, toppled, and hit the ground with a crash. A dark pool of blood began to take form under the head shortly after.

"Sir! Five contacts heading right at us at 10:00!"

Indeed, five Zillas were running toward them in a V-shaped Delta formation. Ozaki tried his hardest to compare them to something, anything, like a flock of migrating geese, perhaps, but he couldn't. The creatures coming at them now created a feeling of primal malevolence like Ozaki hadn't known in all his years of fighting kaiju.

Besides... geese were _small_.

"Break up their formation. Fire missiles and the maser!" ordered Captain Gordon.

Ozaki took quick but precise aim at the Zilla in front, then hit the trigger. A dozen missiles and a bright orange beam of amplified microwave energy cruised toward the Zillas. The maser moved much faster, and caught the Zilla it was aimed at dead center. A shower of sparks and crackling electronic radiation hid the details from view, but when it cleared, the only remains of the lizard was a pile of ash.

Thr blinding light also obscured the approaching missiles from the Zillas directly next to it. One of them was struck in the head several times and died immediately. The other was hit in the ankle and barely managed to roll out of the way of the rest that were locked on to it. The other two Zillas dodged the missiles easily, and the _Gotengo_ had no time to get out of the way before they both clamped their jaws onto the head of the drill.

The front of the warship vibrated as the Zillas yanked back and forth. It was hard to tell, because both the rocking of both the viewscreen camera outside and the rocking of the crew inside turned everything into a big blur, but it looked like the Zilla with the wounded ankle was limping forth to assist its brothers.

"They're gonna take out the drill!" yelled somebody, whom Ozaki couldn't identify through all the other various noises.

"That's impossible," responded someone else, and this time Ozaki recognized him as a technician. "The drill is made of grade-A titanium-steel alloy that's hard enough to pierce pure diamond. There's no way-"

The monologue was abruptly cut off by the harshest of the metallic scraping noises they had heard throughout the entire battle. The shaking intensified exponentially - then everything suddenly stopped.

The silence was accompanied by one of the most disheartening sights any of the crew had ever laid eyes on; the three Zillas were holding the drill, various wires and mechanical devices still sparking and sputtering at the base.

"You were saying?" inquired Captain Gordon sourly. The technician's only reply was to sink lower into his chair.

* * *

This was _not_good.

The other imperfections to the ship could be worked around. If the missiles ran out, they had other weapons. They could avoid most of the damage to the hull without much trouble. The battle would most likely be over before an hour passed anyway.

But without the drill...

The drill was what made the _Gotengo_ such a feat of human engineering. The EDF had other ships, but the _Gotengo_ was the best in virtually all areas. The _Karyu_ and the _Rumbling_ simply had cannons on the front for firing the phaser, and while it allowed the former at least to have more freedom to aim it, the presence of the drill was just too much more useful for pursuing the more elusive kaiju, like Manda. Without the drill, the ship had lost its uniqueness.

More to the point, the drill was the conduit for the maser and phaser. In fact, due to some technical detail Captain Gordon never bothered learning, it somehow allowed it to fire the maser when other warships couldn't. Still, he had to ask the question.

"Do we still have phaser and maser capabilities?"

The look on Ozaki's face said it all. "No, sir."

The Captain didn't have time to dwell on this; the Zillas had thrown aside the drill and seemingly just remembered that their enemy was still alive.

"What about microphasers?"

The Ensign seemed a bit more cheerful as he gave this news. "Online and ready for firing, sir."

Captain Gordon nodded. "Aim low and strafe their legs. Ready all remaining missiles for firing."

The blue beams carved paths through both the air and the Zillas' kneecaps. The monsters howled in pain as blood flowed from the cuts. Whenever one of them even thought about trying to move forward, another microphaser slashed its leg. Before too long, all three of them were rolling around on the ground.

"Fire missiles!" ordered the Captain.

The microphasers shut off, and the air was immediately filled with the explosives to take their place. The twenty or so missiles raced through the air towards the downed Zillas. Most of them hit their marks, and the sound of the explosions were joined by a harmony of dying roars.

The fire parted to reveal a still-living Zilla rolling to the side. It was clear that it had been hit; there were two gaping wounds on its chest, directly where its heart was. The kaiju gasped and held its bleeding chest with one claw as the missiles it had dodged began to curve back to finish it off.

What seemed a cause for joy quickly turned to one for horror; the Zilla was moving at a sort of half-crawl right at the _Gotengo_. So fast, in fact, that they didn't have time to zoom out of the way before it clutched the head of the ship as if for dear life.

They had no way of getting it off, of course, as there was no drill, no maser or phaser, and the microphaser turrets couldn't aim that far inward. The Zilla didn't actually appear to be doing anything, other than leaning on them. It didn't bite or claw or breathe fire at the warship, almost as if it was saving its strength for something.

The crew of the _Gotengo_ didn't have to wait long to find out what it was saving its strength for.

Behind the image of the panting monster on the viewscreen, the missiles were streaking toward their target. And their target was right on them. Just before the missiles hit, the Zilla used all the remaining energy in its dying body to jump up and over the ship. It was dead before it hit the ground.

Which left the viewscreen a clear image of the missile volley coming right at them.

"Son of a-"

Captain Gordon was interrupted by the missiles impacting the giant hole where the drill had been. The _Gotengo _shook as it never had before, not when the most savage Zilla was tearing into it, not when Godzilla had hit it with a heat ray just after Kaiser Ghidorah was obliterated. Through the sound of the missiles exploding inside it, there was an electronic whir that gradually lost frequency as all power in the ship died. Then, with the sickening sensation in the stomachs of everyone aboard, the warship began to fall.

"Brace yourselves!" yelled the Captain. Of course the ship had seatbelts, but this situation was somewhat different than usual. Everyone got as good a grip as they could on the edges of their seats, computer consoles, or whatever else they could reach that was securely bolted down.

Since the power was out, the viewscreen offered no clues as to how close to the ground they were. Faster and faster they fell, until-

The jolt caused by the warship crashing into the ground caused one of the seatbelts to actually snap, sending the seat's occupant flying into his blank computer screen. The sound of breaking glass filled the air, and the body went limp. The sudden lack of the motion caused several of the crew to throw up (again), then all was quiet.

The _Gotengo _was down.

"What are you waiting for, an invitation? Get up!" barked Captain Gordon. Some of the bridgecrew jumped at the words, then everybody got out of their seats.

Ozaki immediately moved over to where the crewmember was sent into his moniter. He put two fingers over the man's neck to check for a pulse, then announced to the bridge at large, "He's dead." Another brief silence followed.

"Then he's gone the best way anyone could dream of," said the Captain, hiding his own remorse for the loss. "Ozaki." The mutant straightened. "Where are the weapons kept?"

Ozaki led him to a small storage closet near the back. There were two maser rifles and five maser bazookas. They passed out the weapons quickly, Ozaki and Captain Gordon getting the rifles. There wasn't nearly enough for everybody; about half the crew were left empty-handed, but it was the best they could do.

They climbed out of the hatch and into the night air. Every breath brought the odor of smoke with it, and particles of ash stung the Captain's eyes and caused them to water.

"Orders, sir?" came a voice to his right. He turned to see that it was Ozaki.

"Our objective has not changed. We're guarding Minya."

The mutant nodded and looked past Captain Gordon's shoulder. He turned around as well to find that a Zilla was walking casually in their direction.

"Permission to speak freely, Captain?" asked Ozaki.

"Granted," the Captain answered.

"We're screwed."

"My thoughts exactly," said Captain Gordon as he took aim at the Zilla's head.

* * *

A/N: A bit of trivia: That part in the beginning where Godzilla breaks the Zilla's spine was actually based on the review of last chapter by **Zillah 91**. Did Godzilla seem angry enough with the Zilla at that part?


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

Physically, Captain Gordon was standing amidst the ruins of Tokyo, where an army of monsters fought viciously in the distance against two brave, powerful kaiju who considered the earth something to be saved instead of conquered, while, quite a bit closer, a single member of the army, at the head of which he was currently pointing a maser rifle, was taking great strides directly at them towards the downed son of one of the defenders.

Mentally, he was sitting beside his mother, his six-year-old body trembling as he cried into her chest.

* * *

"Shh... it's alright, Doug... everything's gonna be okay."

They were sitting in a shelter, accompanied by thousands of others whose homes were no longer anything more than piles of rubble. Little Douglas Gordon had his arms wrapped around his mother, who was patting him on the back comfortingly as tears leaked from his eyes and were immediately absorbed into her shirt, leaving a large, wet stain that had long since grown bigger than his head.

He had been sitting in the living room, watching a TV show he could no longer remember through his present grief, when an intense shockwave ripped through the ground. Pictures fell off the walls and he heard a distant shriek of surprise from his mother in the kitchen. His first thought was an earthquake, but then a loud alarm rang from the TV, and his show was replaced by several big words he didn't know how to read. He scowled in annoyance; he wanted his show to come back on.

But then his mother said something about "kie-joo," and before he knew what was happening, she had grabbed his wrist and dragged him out of the house and into the streets of Sierra Vista, where a very large crowd of people was running away from something. This confused him very much; his mother had always said never to go into the street, yet now she and what seemed to be the whole population of the city was doing it. There was something in the air that made his eyes water and his throat burn. It hung in the air like smoke, but it was more of a brownish color than black or grey. To accompany the strange gas, shrill screams and hoarse coughs filled the air. Doug couldn't understand what was happening.

His mother had eventually hoisted him onto her back as she ran. Doug's six-year-old attention span quickly drifted away from why all these people were screaming and running as the realization came into his mind; he was finally taller than everyone else! Beaming, he gazed over the heads of the crowd. He saw several other people lying face-down on the side of the road, and as they went on, he saw more and more people lying still in that same area. He wondered curiously why they would be sleeping at a time like this. They were supposed to be running. Even as he watched, a woman clutching a newborn baby was standing on all fours, retching and wheezing convulsively until she too fell over and did not move. _Strange,_ he thought. He had never seen somebody fall asleep while they were coughing before.

Suddenly, the screams intensified, many of the running people turning their heads and pointing behind them. They looked... scared. Terrified. Doug looked down and saw that his mother's face was wearing the same expression. Not sure what he would see, turned around - and immediately wished he hadn't.

It was like a dark stormcloud had come alive, but a hundred times worse. Its black skin, if it could accurately even be called skin, was a dirty, sludgy mess that looked like garbage that had been slapped together, held by hot glue, and left out in the sun for several weeks to rot. It was flying slowly, methodically, in between the buildings, occasionally smashing into one of them and sending torrents of smashed rubble and glass raining down on other running people beneath it. It had no wings of any sort, but it seemed to be propelled by that brownish gas that was making everybody cough, which was pouring out of its underside like exhaust from a car. Set squarely in center of the particularly large lump that passed for the creature's head were two large eyes that glowed a clear red even in the broad daylight.

Now Doug understood why the people were running. They wanted to get away from this... this thing. This monster. But then, it would make no sense why people would be falling asleep on the sides of the road while a giant flying monster was chasing them and spewing its choking smog. Unless...

The horror of the realization filled him up like a bucket fills with water.

Not asleep.

Dead.

His screams joined the others, for he did not know what else to do, but nobody paid attention.

He didn't remember much after that. It was all one big loud blur, filled with the _clop-clop_s of the crowd's feet all hitting the ground so often that there was never an exact instant where he didn't hear it, and crashes, and explosions, and screams, and hacking coughs, and a terrible, high-pitched gurgle coming from behind him that repeated itself over and over for several seconds like a skipping CD...

How they had gotten to the shelter, he did not remember. But he didn't care. All that he cared about was why his mother was not answering his question, only staring back down at him with eyes sparkling with tears of her own.

"Is Daddy awight?"

It took her a long time before she finally did answer, and she did, her voice trembled violently as if she would lose control and burst into tears at any moment.

"Yes, Doug, I'm sure Daddy's fine."

But Doug was certainly not reassured by that, especially when his mother seemed so sad herself as she said that. "How do you know?" he asked weakly. "Did he caw you?"

His mother hugged him again. "No, I haven't heard from him," she said unsteadily after several silent moments. "But I know he's alright. No news is good news."

Doug pulled back, his worry for his father briefly pushed back at the introduction of this mysterious new phrase. "What does dat mean?"

"It means... it means that if you haven't heard from somebody, they're probably perfectly alright." She gulped, then gave him a watery smile. Doug returned it and hugged her again, feeling much better than before.

No news was good news.

* * *

_Mom was wrong, _Captain Gordon thought dryly.

But, as a matter of fact, he knew not even that thought was true. Though he obviously couldn't tell at six years old, all his mother was doing when she said that was trying to make him - and probably herself as well - feel better.

In the long run, all that it succeeded in doing was making it twice as painful for his six-year-old self when he learned that his father had been in one of the buildings that the monster had destroyed.

He didn't need to mother for him to figure out that "no news is good news" didn't make any sense. If you had no news from somebody, they could be trapped, or imprisoned, or dead. On the other hand, however, if you didn't receive any news from somebody, it's also just as likely that they are, indeed, perfectly fine. They could simply be busy riding a roller coaster, watching a movie in the theater, or being awarded one million dollars. So, the only way to truly make sense of this statement is to say that no news is no news, but that's simply repeating itself so that there's no point to it in the first place.

Ever since then, he had made a lot of changes to his life in response to this new part of life that had been so cruelly opened up to him. The first step, as with anything, was learning about it, which was made much easier by the fact that, for reasons Capatin Gordon no longer remembered, he and his mother moved to Japan after their home was destroyed. It turned out that giant monsters - also called kaiju, as his mom had said it on that day - attacked the earth and destroyed cities similarly to, if much more rarely than, hurricanes or tornadoes. They had named the sludgy one he had seen Hedorah, though this did not matter to him. Something that mattered a bit more to him was that Hedorah, as it turned out, was actually one of the weaker kaiju, yet it still did all that damage.

The subject of daikaiju became a borderline obession to him during his school career. Any elective classes he chose had something or another to do with kaiju, whether it was Biology, to know where he would need to shoot a monster to kill it the most effectively, or Advanced Geometry, to know how to fire missiles and other projectiles precisely if their computer lock-ons failed. And he worked as hard as he could in all his subjects. All he wanted to do when he grew up was kill monsters, just as they killed humans. Just as they killed his father.

His teachers all expected their brilliant straight-A student Douglas Gordon to go off to some college when he finished high school. Instead, he sent in his application to the JSDF the very day he graduated. He was accepted very soon, and soon found himself on the crew of their first - but certainly not last, they assured him constantly - anti-kaiju warship, the _Gotengo_. It was he who fired the missiles that buried Godzilla for all those decades.

He had learned to harden himself since his father's death, in more ways than one. He would spend all his time that he wasn't studying working out at the nearest gym, gradually turning his body into a powerful weapon. To hone this skill even more, he took several martial arts classes, all of which he mastered, as well as joined the wrestling team at school.

But, more importantly, his heart hardened as well.

His smiles came rather rarely, even back to the time when he was still six. He had a group of what he called "friends," but he knew deep down that that was probably not the right word. He liked them and everything, but he had learned not to make true attachments. Because if you were attached to something, or someone, it would hurt when you lost them. When, not if. No, it was best not to involve himself in that kind of thing again.

Perhaps a small amount of this philosophy had unconsciously been passed to Ozaki. After all, despite the fact that Kazama was his training partner and his best friend, Ozaki had been able to, for the time, at least, shrug it off when he sacrificed himself to take out the Xilian Mothership's shields with only the words "Get a grip!" to console him.

But not even this was entirely true. Try as he might, Captain Gordon could never abandon all attachment. It was only a momentary pang of loss he had felt for the fallen soldier a few minutes ago when Ozaki had announced that he was dead, but still, it was there.

He wondered, as the Zilla drew steadily nearer, how Commander Namikawa and all the others at the EDF base would decifer the lack of news that would come from them once they were dead. Naturally, none of them believed in nonsense like "No news is good news." But, in fact, they wouldn't even need to reach a conclusion by themselves. Obviously, if anybody was to die, Captain Gordon and the crew would be the first to go, but if Godzilla and Gamera failed as well, the Zillas would move on. The nests would be built, the eggs would be laid, the people would be slaughtered. The operatives at the EDF would get their news in the form of 3 meter bodies breaking down the doors. Then there would be no news ever again.

"Listen up!" he said to the crew without taking his eyes away from the approaching kaiju. "You've all run the simulations in case something like this happens. Remember, never stay in one spot as you fire. Aim for the head. And above all, _don't panic_. That'll cost you your life here. Those of you with guns, take aim and fire on my mark. Those of you who don't, stay close to someone who does, because if that thing comes at you, it may be your only hope."

The Zilla was close now, only about 150 meters. "Wait for it," said the Captain slowly. The Zilla was gazing right over them, taking as little notice of them as ants as it moved toward the downed Minya. "Wait for it," repeated the Captain, his voice steadily becoming quieter so that it seemed like he was talking to himself.

At that moment, the Zilla swung its gaze downwards - directly at the out-of-place humans - and gave a roar that was half threatening, half curious.

It was enough. "_Fire_!" yelled the Captain unnecessarily; most of the crew had done so out of reflex and fear anyway when the Zilla roared.

At any rate, it came to the same thing. Small bolts of maser energy blasted forth from the weapons, filling the air around the Zilla's face and still-open mouth with a small maelstrom. Because the majority of the weapons were aimed with reflex and a shaky hand, many of them flew past the Zilla's head and into the sky. However, simply because there were so many (not to mention that the only two wielders of automatic weapons were aiming very well), it was still a respectable amount of maser bolts that went into the Zilla's eyes and mouth, tearing apart the soft tissue within.

The kaiju howled deafeningly in surprise and pain at the suddenness of the attack, sharply drawing back its head and swinging its arms wildly as if trying to bat away a very large swarm of bees. In the midst of one of its cries, it spouted fire from its jaws, and Captain Gordon could actually feel the heat from it on his face as it momentarily lit up the sky like a firework.

Ozaki, apparently, was the only one not fazed by this; many members of the crew shielded their eyes or even ducked at the blast of flame. The mutant, on the other hand, actually had experience on this kind of thing, and a lot of it. His steady stream of energy bolts alone pounded into the Zilla's fleshy neck as it shook its head back and forth like a dog.

This was not like combat from the confines of a warship. On the the _Gotengo_, the speakers would soften the noise, the viewscreen would automatically dim in response to the light from a ranged attack, and there was, of course, no possible way to feel the heat from energy weapons or the earthquake-like _jolt_ whenever a kaiju's feet hit the ground. The Captain had always considered fighting from a ship dangerous, but this... It was like crawling out of your skin, making you feel vulnerable and naked against the unforgiving outside elements. Now he knew how a hermit crab deprived of its shell for a few hours as it scuttles about while looking for a new one must feel.

The Zilla had now gained enough of its senses back (though it was still temporarily blinded) to actually aim its next breath of flame - right at the humans. The light stabbed at Captain Gordon's eyes, the heat washed over him like boiling water, and he knew his dive to the side would not save him from the approaching flames-

To his amazement, the sounds of the wailing kaiju and the steady whines and whirrs of the maser weapons kept going. He looked up just in time to see the shield that Ozaki had formed in front of the crew fade and disappear as the last of the fire was deflected halmlessly aside. As the mutant lowered his hand, the Captain could see that he was breathing slightly heavily, like the sudden effort had cost him.

Captain Gordon straightened up promptly before anyone could see he had been on the ground and continued firing at the Zilla's face as if nothing had just happened. The monster, however, had seemingly had enough of its tiny aggressors. Still flailing its body randomly about to possibly avoid the hail of maser bolts that were coming at it again, it raised its foot high, then sent it crashing down at exactly the point the humans were congregated.

Captain Gordon was already far enough to the side to avoid the maneuver easily. Ozaki, with both the honed reflexes of an uncountable number of the M Organization's training sessions with Kazama and no way of countering the attack this time, had no choice but to leap. out of the way. The Captain saw no more than that before the colossal reptilain foot smashed into the ground like a meteor, throwing up dirt and rubble alike as the shockwave threw him backwards.

He was tempted for a moment simply to lie there, dazed, and pretend that nothing was happening before common sense and concern for his crew kicked in and made him look around. What he saw made him want to lie his head back down and never look up again.

The Zilla left a footprint in the ground that five cars could easily be parked in. The force of its descent resulted in it being much deeper than it normally would have, and the sides formed almost a 90 degree angle with the ground. But none of that drew Captain Gordon's conscious attention. What did was the dark liquid slowly spreading through the pit, covering what now appeared to be about a dozen messy stains spread over the rocks.

His numb shock, his disbelief, was expelled immediately by the Zilla's quick bellow of triumph as it made to continue towards Minya, and pain was replaced by rage. He shouldered the maser weapon and fired up at the monster even as he ran at it. He didn't know what he would do to it once he reached it, only that he wanted to hurt it as much as possible. He heard the sound of metal rubbed against metal, and was surprised to see his own arm hurling the samurai sword he always kept with him like a javelin.

The blade flashed bright silver against the airborne gloom. A small _chnt_ sound, barely audible over the renewed cries of the Zilla, reached Captain Gordon's ears as the sword bit into one of the creature's toes. In the midst of its angery snarls, there came a short but loud yelp.

The Captain saw something glowing a pale blue. His first thought was Godzilla, charging up a heat ray, but it was immediately abolished when he saw it clearly enough to see that it was at ground level and make out Ozaki's silhouette behind it. He saw the small sphere of light, which was being formed at Ozaki's hand, suddenly raise up. At the same moment, he caught the familiar gleam of silver he had seen just a few seconds ago out of the corner of his eye. He diverted his full attention to it and caught the smallest glimpse of it spinning upward like a boomerang before it sliced an almost invisible gash into the Zilla's wagging throat.

The roars were abruptly cut off, and what passed for the monster's eyes widened in shock and surprise. After a moment, Captain Gordon noticed that the monster's cries had been replaced by what sounded vaguely like a slowly deflating balloon as air passed through the hole the sword's path had cut into its esophagus.

The arms thrashed more wildly than ever, evidently, and unsuccessfully, trying to hit whatever wasn't allowing it to breathe. At last, after what seemed almost an eternity, the Zilla gave as close to a bellow as it could manage without a windpipe, then toppled forward and crashed to the ground with easily ten times the force of its stomp.

Captain Gordon, who had avoided being thrown off his feet again by jumping at exactly the right moment, waited. He had seen seemingly dead kaiju suddenly come back to life and redouble their attacks. Without so much as a ship, he wasn't taking any chances. After several minutes, though, he set off, cautiously, toward the mound of scales and spikes.

Ozaki met him at the same place. Now that they were next to each other, Captain Gordon could clearly see the horror that likely hadn't left Ozaki's face since the Zilla had crushed the _Gotengo_'s crew like a bug. With no change whatsoever in his expression, a small point of pale blue light shone on his fingertip as he flicked it to the left, sending the samurai sword flying into its owner's hand. Both of their eyes strayed to the footprint before the mutant spoke.

"How... it just... one second, they were... then the next..." There was no reason for him to be clearer.

"Don't feel sorry for them, Ozaki. What good'll that do anybody? Them? You can't help them now. Yourself? There's no use beating yourself up about something you couldn't do anything about."

Ozaki hung his head at the last few words.

"I know what you're thinking," continued the Captain as gently as he could manage, "but even making a shield wouldn't have done anything. Fire's one thing, a giant foot is another. If you'd tried, _all_ of us would be dead."

Something about the look on Ozaki's face told him that the mutant didn't consider that a terrible possibility at the moment. That wasn't good. He had seen it before; if he had no hope, he had no real fight left in him.

Before Captain Gordon could attempt to snap Ozaki out of it, however, something happened that made both of them look to the sky.

When Gamera had arrived, he had initially looked like a bright light coming from the side, making a raspy, high-pitched sound. Now, however, the thing in the air made no noise either of them could detect as its long shadow fell upon both of their faces. As it sank lower, it gradually became more visible.

It looked like it was alive, or at least organic in some way, yet it didn't move at all save for its sluggish descent downward. What looked like brown, lumpy skin was stretched over its ovalescent body, broken only by a series of large, off-white orblike growths surrounded by short spikes. The thing, whatever it was, had no visible indication of any difference between its front and its back. And it was absolutely massive, easily dwarfing the dead Zilla beneath their feet.

Captain Gordon thought that it looked familiar, somehow, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Still, he felt that he had seen it somewhere before, though he had no earthly idea where. He heard Ozaki gasp beside him, as if he knew something the Captain didn't. It took only a moment before something clicked inside his brain and it all suddenly made sense.

He had seen it once, and only once, before, in the short period of time he and the survivors of the Xilians' initial attack hid in the _Gotengo_'s underground docking bay. He had accessed all the files he could find (all of which were classified) on past extraterrestrial invasions.

Those weren't growths; they were windows. That wasn't skin; it was a hull. That wasn't a kaiju; it was a Tachyon ship.

Captain Gordon raised his sword as the enormous ship came to a surprisingly light rest on the ground in front of them. Was it not enough that they were stuck fighting in the midst several hundred kaiju using the world's largest city as a boxing ring? He and Ozaki crouched behind a piece of rubble large enough to conceal them both and peeked over the side.

What appeared at first glance to be a particularly lumpy region of the hull suddenly seemed to melt away, revealing a deep mist containing about half a dozen human-shaped shadows. The Captain's muscles tensed as they began, one by one, to file out...

It took the Captain a second to grasp what stepped out of the ship: a human. Not a Tachyon alien, hovering two feet off the ground with its spindly arms held out like a meditating priest, but a human.

It was a male, with short, brown hair. He seemed, on the outside, average in almost every way; he didn't look like an especially great physical specimen, nor was he wearing anything that might indicate some kind of importance, military or otherwise. Yet he walked in a way that suggested leadership. As if to underline this, some kind of hidden sense of power seemed to emanate from him, something external, something besides him, but, at the same time, coming from him.

The second human seemed even more average than the first. No mysterious aura of any sort came from him, and nothing, except perhaps for his white lab coat, distinguished him from anybody you would walk past on the street. He was also a bit overweight, with hair that was about an even mix of brown and blonde, that spread to his face in a short beard. He looked more than a bit nervous as he surveyed the wreckage around him, and he jumped every time he heard a distant echo from a Zilla's roar.

Following him, however, was just about anything but average: a shabby, yellow robot. It was hard to give it an exact shape, because most of the body was obscured by several long, probing arms. It moved with a set of wheels designed like a tank's, obviously built for rough terrain. It had a long neck that protruded outward from the rest of the body, ending in a rounded head with a speaker where the mouth would have been, a red sensor on the forehead, and two small clusters of three eyes each. The head rolled around, surveying its surroundings; Captain Gordon and Ozaki quickly ducked their heads behind the chunk of concrete again. He heard a high-pitched, clearly artificial voice say, "Radiation levels reading approximately 9.54 percent above normal."

When he heard the squishing sound that indicated the Tachyon ship's hatch had closed back up, Captain Gordon deemed it safe again to look again. Three more people had joined them.

One of them, a woman who looked like she was in her mid-30s, had long, red hair that rested neatly over her shoulders. She had about the same feeling of authority coming from her that the short-haired man had, but, in a way, more. She slightly reminded Captain Gordon of a school teacher, or perhaps Commander Namikawa: strict, but conceivably able to chill out or joke around.

The second was also a woman. Unlike the redhead, her hair was about the same length as the first man's, such a dark shade of black that it almost seemed navy blue, the same color of her lipstick. She wore simple, skintight clothing only interrupted by what was unmistakably a weapon holster in the place of a belt. Perhaps it was imply the no-nonsense look permanently chiseled onto her face, but there was an immediate impression that this was not someone to cross. The Captain often found himself thinking that he gave the same impression to other people.

The last person was a dark-skinned male, with black hair that collected itself into about half a dozen almost braidlike strands that hung in every direction relative to his head. About the most peculiar thing about him was that he was clearly only in his late teens, unless it was that he was looking at the destroyed city not with fear, like the overweight man, nor grim seriousness, as everyone else was, but something between calm and impressed.

Again, Captain Gordon thought the group of people were familiar, that he had seen them before... this must have had something to do with the Tachyon ship, he was sure of it...

The teenager was the first (not counting the robot) to break the silence. He shook his head, as if mildly disappointed about something. "Somebody threw a party and we weren't invited?" His voice had an accent that Captain Gordon was not sure of. South American, or... Portuguese, maybe?

Everybody else gave him a sharp look that clearly said that this was no time for jokes. He threw up his hands innocently.

"You saw through the window," said the red-haired woman. "There are mutations in this..." she searched for the right word, "ex-city, and a lot of them."

"You think the G-Man can handle all of them?" asked the teenager.

G-Man... Something about the phrase stirred something in the Captain's memory...

Before anyone could answer the mysterious question, however, he heard the slightly warbling voice of the robot speak again: "Human biosigns detected in-" he heard the sound of the wheels turning, "this direction."

"Show yourselves!" demanded a female voice with thick French accent that he was sure came from the woman with the black hair, and he heard something vaguely like a gun being cocked. Sharing a quick nod with Ozaki, he slowly lifted his hands and came out from behind the rubble.

The French woman was holding what was obviously a Tachyon laser rifle, pointed right at them.

"Who are you? demanded the first man.

"And why are you here?" said the second, less forcefully, more quizzically.

"And why are you dressed like it's Halloween?" asked the teenager curiously, eying Ozaki's uniform.

"I'm Captain Douglas Gordon," he said quickly, for Ozaki looked like he had an angry comeback ready even when a gun was pointed at him, "of the EDF battleship the _Gotengo_. This is Ensign Shinichi Ozaki, operator of the maser and phaser cannons and highly trained M Organization monster combatist." He paused to let that sink in to the French woman, but the rifle didn't lower. "Who are_ you_?"

"Humanitarian Environmental Analysis Team," answered the red-haired woman, eying them with suspicion. The teenager rolled his eyes pointedly, as if he considered the title a very poor choice.

"HEAT?" said Ozaki, with no attempt to disguise his incredulity.

"Whattaya know?" said the teenager, evidently much more pleased that he had referred to them by the acronym. "Trick-or-Treat here's a fan! Oh yeah, and by the way, it really stands for High-performance Environmental Attack Team."

As the red-haired woman began to debate with him about this ("I told you, that would make it be pronounced, Huhpeat!"), Captain Gordon suddenly recognized them all in great detail, having studied them rather grudgingly for several months. The first man to step out was Dr. Nick Tatopoulos, the leader of the team. The overweight one was Mendell Craven, head of electronics, and the creator of the yellow robot, NIGEL (Next-millenium Intelligence Gathering Electronic Liaison). The redheaded woman was Dr. Elsie Chapman, biologist specializing in paleontology. Skipping over the second woman, who he had no memories of from the records, the teenager's name was Randy Hernandez, who was, officially, their computer specialist. Having worked with a few "computer specialists" in his day, Captain Gordon immediately knew this translated to much more accurate title: hacker.

"So?" Randy was saying. "If you go by that rule, Craven's robot would be named NMIGEL."

"If you are the Captain of an EDF warship," said the French woman, cutting across their pointless argument, "where is it, and where is the rest of your crew?"

"To answer your questions in order, destroyed and dead." He expected her to soften at this, but the point of the gun did not waver. "And who are you, anyway? I haven't seen you in any of the files on your team."

"Good," she said simply.

"Her name is Monique," piped up Randy cheerfully, ignoring the look the woman shot at him. "She's my ever-loving girlfriend-"

Before the words were out of his mouth, the woman named Monique whirled the Tachyon rifle to point at him instead, and he quickly added a hasty, "Just kidding." A shadow of a smirk crossed Monique's mouth.

"What's going on here?" said Nick with just as much force as before.

"Monsters," said Ozaki. "Lots."

"We already knew that," snapped Elsie.

"But just out of curiosity," said Dr. Craven with a nervous edge to his voice that indicated much more than just curiosity, "by 'a lot,' how many do you mean?"

"I'd say about two hundred fifty at the moment," replied Captain Gordon casually. HEAT traded startled looks.

Conclusions rolled out one by one in the Captain's mind. HEAT had gone to space to deal with the Tachyons. They had only just gotten back, evidenced by the fact that they didn't know what was going on and had arrived in one of the aliens' ships, obviously stolen. To fight aliens, they would have needed to bring their weapon...

Even as the thought crossed his mind, he heard the same sound that the Tachyon door had made as it opened, but slower, lower pitched, louder. He looked up to see that it was a particularly large window, and it was pulling itself apart like Silly Putty. A very large shadow moved behind it, and Captain only figured out what it was a split-second before it stepped out.

It was a Zilla.

But, upon closer inspection, it was a bit different than those they had been fighting. The skin was more of a brownish color than the elephant grey skin of the rest of them, and it seemed much more knobbly and thick. It also looked more muscular and, at the same time, streamlined, testament to an older age. And, much like Godzilla, Gamera, or even, to an extent, Nick Tatopoulos, an unexplanable sense of power came before it that the other Zillas, for the most part, didn't possess.

Randy gave a smug smile at the sight of the kaiju. "In this corner, weighing in at 1,000 tons, the destroyer of all things big and ugly other than himself, the one, the only, _Godzilla_!"

Despite the immediately apparent inaccuracy to that statement, HEAT's "Godzilla" lifted its head and roared, a battle cry, much like the real Godzilla, for anything that would stand in its way.

* * *

A/N: Okay, I expect that by this point, half of you are bouncing up and down in your seats, and the other half are scratching their heads in confusion. I'll clarify what's going on.

If you look back to Chapter 1, it says that_ two_ eggs, not one, survived (not sure how many people caught that, though I do know that at least one, **Raptor Llama**, did), but it only follows the story of one of them: the one at the end of the American Godzilla movie. The other is meant to be the egg of the Zilla from Godzilla: The Series, the TV show serving as a sequel to the movie. For those who may not have seen the show, the hatchling imprints on Nick Tatopoulos like a baby chick will with its parent, grows rapidly to full kaiju size, and, with Nick and his monster fighting team, HEAT, travels around the world to fight other giant monsters that are popping up and threatening mankind. You see, I think this fits all the storylines better, because in the end of the movie, nobody's there when the baby Zilla hatches, but Nick is present when the egg in the first episode of the TV show does so (also, the egg in the movie is clearly inside of Madison Square Garden, whereas the egg in the show is found underneath a subway tunnel). Subsequently, the movie-egg Zilla couldn't cause any harm because the Xilians kidnapped him, which ties in to Godzilla: Final Wars.

I planned for the Zilla from Godzilla: The Series to help Godzilla from the very beginning since I started writing this story, as evidenced by the addition I made in the first chapter. In fact, I wasn't going to have Gamera appear at all until I decided otherwise about halfway through the story, even with the reference I made earlier to the third movie in the Gamera Trilogy. A lot of people guessed it would be Gamera, since I said that Godzilla would have an ally in the same chapter that I referenced him, and he made a small appearance in the trailer on Youtube. Hopefully, this caught a lot of you off guard. There were some close calls as well. For example, **Zillah 91** guessed both this Zilla and Minya in the same chapter, so I could pass of his guess as right without revealing that they were both actually correct.

Also, I'm having a bit of a dilemma for the new Zilla: what should I call him? I can't just call him Godzilla or Zilla, because those names are already taken. My best two options that I can think of right now are Ginozilla and Zilla Jr. Ginozilla might kind of sound stupid, while Zilla Jr. doesn't exactly evoke a sense of power. Any suggestions?


	23. Chapter 23

A/N: As for the name of HEAT's Zilla, I've received some really interesting and creative suggestions. However, after tallying up the votes, the winning name is Zilla Jr. I guess calling him that really isn't very bad - after all, they do say "Godzilla Jr." in Godzilla vs. Destroyah, and that works perfectly fine for him.

* * *

**Chapter 23**

Ozaki felt completely and totally bewildered - an impressive feat, considering he had only recently been highly involved in a mission to save the earth from a race of invading aliens, which included freeing his organization's mortal enemy from a sheet of ice in a top-secret EDF base in Antarctica to help accomplish this, only to discover that he was nearly as powerful as it and using this same power to save that creature's life and allowing it to destroy the last remnant of the aforementioned invasion, which just so happened to be a giant, three headed, lightning-spitting space dragon in a fiery explosion visible from space.

There they were standing, their ship destroyed, their number cut down to roughly a sixth of what it had been merely minutes before, in the middle of the most vicious battle in world history, without help, without hope. When he recognized the Tachyon ship, what shadow of hope there was left in him was seemingly destroyed, wiped out, crushed like an ant and swept carelessly aside. Coupled with his recent failure to his troops, which had left them without so much as actual bodies as a pool of blood left to seep slowly into the ground, Ozaki seriously considered pointing his maser rifle at his face right then and there and pulling the trigger.

Now he was standing in front of the one thing in the world that could have resurrected his hope - he doubted that it would have cheered him up much even if another Mothra had shown up. For one single, glorious moment, he felt... there was no other word for it... _happy_. That's all it was. It felt strikingly similar to how he felt after Operation: Final War had ended, watching Godzilla and Minya wade out into the sunset. Just pure happiness, unfiltered by thought, doubt, or even the memory of why he felt that way.

HEAT's Zilla suddenly stepping forward and sticking its reptilian face alarmingly close to both him and Captain Gordon put an immediate end to this.

Ozaki could see, smell, and feel the creature's breath as it softly hissed at them. A hot curtain of steam blew past him that smelled so strongly of fish that he gagged twice before he mastered himself. A long, pink tongue, forked twice on each side and ending in a triangular point, slapped wetly against a row of sharp teeth covered in so much plaque that Ozaki could have, if willing and stupid enough, wiped his hand across one of them and scooped up an entire handful. Thick saliva dripped from the teeth that might have reminded Ozaki of water dripping from stalactites were he in a different position at the moment. Instinct, reason, and fear all clashed as he fought himself from raising his maser rifle and blasting that horrible mouth out of his way.

"Godzilla!" Ozaki heard Nick call. The kaiju's head turned partially to one side. "Back away!"

With a low vocalization that sounded strikingly like the noise a puppy makes when obeying its owner, the monster retreated without hesitation. It turned expectantly to Nick and hunched close to the ground so that it was almost sitting, its tail twitching slightly from side to side.

_Zilla Jr. _The name came to Ozaki's mind unbidden.

"So, what exactly _are_ we up against, Captain?" asked Elsie.

A loud growl from above answered her question.

The head of a Zilla was poking over the top of the Tachyon ship. With great stealth, it had climbed silently over the hull to investigate the strange noises coming from the other side, like some great reptilian puma stalking its prey.

"Didn't see that coming," mumbled Randy.

Before those who had weapons even thought about aiming them, the Zilla slid down the hull before coming to a surprisingly light - though still bone-jarring - rest on the ground.

Which was when Ozaki first noticed it; the Zilla was an entire third taller than Zilla Jr.

It must have been that feeling of raw strength, like that of Godzilla and Gamera, coming from it - _him_ - that caused Ozaki not to notice, but, standing next to the other Zilla, it was now apparent that Zilla Jr. could not have been any taller than 60 meters. For one evil moment, it looked like the Zilla was the stronger of the two, that, if they fought, it would win easily, like a fifteen-year-old boy wrestling his twelve-year-old brother; the fact that the latter would actually _win_ was absurd, impossible.

Which brought another, far worse possibility to Ozaki's mind-

"Do you think your monster might side with its family?" Captain Gordon urgently voiced the question for him.

"Been there, done that," said Randy with a dismissive wave of his hand.

But Ozaki wasn't so sure. Junior had risen from his crouching position and was now staring at his nephew, still as a statue, as if in deep thought or consideration. The Zilla turned to him and took a curious sniff, possibly detecting the scent of humans on him. Then, with a spreading of its claws combined with a rolling motion of its shoulders that looked almost like a shrug, it turned instead to the humans and came slowly, deliberately forward, its mouth wide open-

And both a roar of fury and a roar of surprise both shook the night as a brownish blur that Ozaki shortly realized was Junior slammed into the Zilla and tackled it to the ground.

Caught completely off-guard by what it surely perceived as one of its brothers gone insane, the Zilla was too stunned to move for a moment, before Junior's claws began to viciously rake its chest. Then, with only a furious snarl to delay it, a blast of flame combined with a sharp, well-aimed kick unseated Junior, who gracefully landed several hundred feet away in a battle stance.

The Zilla leaped to its feet with a bellow and immediately charged its new foe in a blind rage, uncaring at this point that it was one of its own kind. Junior's answering roar echoed the first almost perfectly in terms of how it may have sounded to, perhaps, a computer recording the wavelength and amplitude of the noises, but the way the sound reverberated in Ozaki's ears - just like the difference between how the two monsters _looked_ and how they _felt_ - caused the two to sound utterly unrelated to each other.

What happened next was almost too fast for Ozaki to see, even with the increased senses that came from being both a mutant and a kaiser. The Zilla was now at its top speed, and within one hundred meters of its relative. Junior's body suddenly twisted like a snake, sending his tail flying out behind him. There was a _crack_ that shattered the air like a thunderbolt as it connected solidly with the right side of the Zilla's face, either from the tail breaking the sound barrier or the vertebrae in the creature's neck shattering.

In either case, the Zilla was dead before it hit the ground, as Junior gave a triumphant roar aimed at the night sky.

While the members of HEAT looked relieved, - and still shocked from that abrupt revelation of exactly what it was they were fighting - a gesture from Captain Gordon was enough to get them running alongside him, over to Minya. Zilla Jr. followed, making the earth tremble with each step.

As they went around the newly deceased-monster, the Captain regarded Randy with a kind of suspicious awe. "How did you know that your Zilla would fight for you?" he asked.

Randy frowned at him. "First of all, Captain G, it's _God_zilla." Ozaki was unsure whether the tightened lines that appeared at the corners of the Captain's eyes were due to the highly informal title or being corrected (wrongly), especially when that person also happened to be a civilian. "Second of all," the teenager continued, "do you know anything about the Tachyon invasion from a few years back?"

"Of course I do," snapped Captain Gordon indignantly, apparently offended that Randy had not assumed that he already knew all about it. "I've read all the files the EDF had on it, none of which I was technically allowed to see." There was no shame or regret in the Captain's voice; Ozaki had the distinct impression that it was his intent to impress Randy with this information.

"Then you've probably read that the aliens augmented the body of the first Godzilla with cybernetic technology and used it to attack Tokyo - or, should I say, here," said Nick. The Captain nodded. For some reason, a shadow passed over Elsie's face as he said this.

"Well, you see," said Randy, "the G-Man wasn't really sure whether to pick his real mom or his adoptive mom." He gestured to Nick at the last couple words, who gave him an irritated look. "But he sided with us in the end - and gave the aliens a demonstration of what happens when you mess with a giant lizard that can give you a worse facial makeover than Michael Jackson."

Everyone within earshot grimaced at the mental picture that brought up.

"Wait a second," said Ozaki. "Doesn't that ship have weapons?"

"We burned them out escaping from the alien fleet," said Craven.

"What about anti-personnel weapons?"

Monique raised the laser rifle. "I have the only one."

"I've got a question for you," said Nick. "How _precisely_ are there over two hundred fully-grown Godzillas running around Tokyo?"

"No idea," said Captain Gordon indifferently. "Is there a chance that your monster laid the eggs?"

"Nope. The big guy's sterile," said Randy.

"Then more than one egg must have survived 1998, is my guess."

"I've got another question," said Elsie, half-raising her hand. "Where are we going?"

"Minya."

"Bless you," said Randy.

Captain Gordon might have tried to explain if not for the scream of terror that pierced the air at that moment. Everyone's hands reflexively slapped over their ears, and still they could hear it as clearly as if their ears were unplugged and listening to a TV on very high volume. Wincing as they looked up, they could see the form of Minya, still far away but clearly visible against the backdrop of dreary grey. It took Ozaki a moment to figure out why he was screaming - Minya's cries were making it hard for him to think - but then he realized that Minya was scared of Zilla Jr.

Instantly, a quick set of _thud_s rippled through the ground to their right, joined shortly by a faint rasping sound that filled the air. Within moments, the silhouette of Godzilla appeared, his legs carrying him as fast as they could manage in long strides, eyes blazing like fire, as the sphere of pale, flickering light from the opposite direction betrayed the approach of Gamera.

Godzilla, now so close that he could be seen in clear detail, halted with an angry roar at Junior just as Gamera's jets were extinguished, allowing the turtle to land on its feet. If the other members of HEAT weren't so preoccupied with taking in these two fearsome beasts, they may have noticed the muffled thump that signaled the fact that Craven had fainted.

"What in the name of Toaster Strudel is that?" asked Randy as he stared up at Godzilla, sounding a bit faint himself.

"Godzilla," said Ozaki deliberately.

The effect was instantaneous; Randy's head turned to Ozaki so sharply that he was surprised it didn't fly off. "_Again? _What is it with you Japanese guys and names, anyway?" He sounded on the verge of hysteria. "Why can't you just call Godzilla 'Godzilla?' It was exactly the same with Dr. Rubik's Cube!"

"Ifukube," corrected Nick, still not taking his eyes off the kaiju.

"Whatever! The point-" He may have gone on the rest of the day if another roar by Godzilla hadn't reduced him to a half-sulky, half-terrified silence.

What had prevented the King of the Monsters and the Guardian of the Universe from attempting to blast Junior out of existence on sight is unknown; perhaps they too sensed that the kaiju standing in front of him was something more than just another Zilla, or fate intervened from this exact reason causing them to attack even more quickly than usual. Whatever the reason, there it was. Godzilla and Gamera both stood in front of Junior, tensed, clearly ready to destroy the monster in front of them, but refraining from acting on this impulse.

Junior could not have been more opposite. Turning completely away from Minya (who had mercifully stopped screaming once he saw that his father was coming), he curled his tail halfway around his front and sank slowly to the ground. Everything about the position - how the hand claws remained tucked close to his chest, out of sight, so that there was no suggestion of threat, and the way that his eyes were focused on the ground at the other two monsters' feet, like a medieval servant facing a great lord - clearly identified it as an entirely submissive gesture. Godzilla and Gamera exchanged what appeared to be questioning looks.

Suddenly, the ground to the left exploded upward in a shower of dirt, dust, and rubble. Barely visible in the center was a Zilla, who instantly charged at Minya, mouth open and talons extended. Neither Godzilla or Gamera could move quick enough to intercept its path, nor could they risk using their energy weapons; one stray fireball would kill Minya as surely as the Zilla's teeth and claws.

But Godzilla and Gamera weren't the only ones there.

Junior had begun spinning around as soon as the Zilla had surfaced. With aim and reflexes that could pick a fighter plane out of the air, his mouth snapped onto the tip of the Zilla's tail without slowing down the head's swing. The Zilla was literally within ten feet of its prey before it was yanked backward by its uncle, flying two thousand feet through the air over the humans before crashing painfully into the ground.

If it wasn't for the electrically charged swooshing sound that accompanied it, Ozaki would have thought that he only imagined it; a narrow wave of blue light traveled swiftly upward through the rows of Junior's spines. When it reached the head, the kaiju's eyes suddenly shone yellow the color of sunlight. His mouth opened, and out from it issued not simply an enraged roar, nor a beam weapon, but both; Zilla Jr.'s battle cry meshed into the sound of a forest fire as a stream of flames, colored a brilliant radioactive green, shot forth through the air and directly at the head of the downed Zilla.

A terrible cry issuing from inside the fire, but did not stop for several seconds. When it did, a hideous sight was revealed. Junior's breath weapon had burned its way straight through the Zilla's eyes and into its brain cavity. The entire head was blackened and shriveled, while thick smoke poured out of the open jaws and empty eye sockets.

Junior and the other two monsters turned back to each other. This time there was no sound from any of them, no angry roars, not even audible breathing. A moment that seemed to lapse into eternity passed where nothing seemed to exist except for the three kaiju; two sets of eyes stared unblinkingly, one large and dark, one burning with a steady flame, both in deep consideration, one pair staring back, yellow and red, but not burning, yet with a sense of calm awaiting just as clear as the emotion from the other two monsters.

Finally, Godzilla and Gamera both simultaneously opened their mouths and roared, which blended together to form what sounded almost like a song of welcome. Junior rose up from his kneeling position, upright and proud, the flame of battle emanating from his eyes.

"What'd I tell ya back in Scotland?" Randy said to Monique with a smug grin. "Mutant cooperation."

Ozaki had no idea what he was referring to, but, somehow, he found that he agreed completely.

* * *

A/N: There are a total of three instances, I believe, where I reference a separate episode of Godzilla: The Series. If anyone can spot all three (or maybe another that I've forgotten), you get fifty super-ultra-mega-bonus points. What good that does you, I don't know, but hey, it's something.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

A dull roar from a Zilla echoed in the distance over the mixture of humans and kaiju, all of which (with the exception of the still unconscious Craven) turned in the direction of the sound. Each of them shook their head slightly, as if coming out of a dream, at this sudden reminder of why they were there. Minya whimpered quietly.

Godzilla and Gamera both swung their heads sharply to Junior. In an unmistakably brisk manner, both of them began to vocalize to their new ally, each sound they made slightly different, some long and drawn out, others short and abrupt, varying in pitch and volume. Each was occasionally accompanied by some kind of body gesture, subtle or over-exaggerated, a bob of the head or a swish of a tail.

_Communicating,_ the realization hit Captain Gordon as thoroughly as a physical blow. The monsters were _talking_ to each other. Not through words, perhaps, not even those in whatever verbal language a kaiju might possess between kindred, but between the repeated, purposely obvious looks toward the building Minya was propped up against and the small, firm roars, the message was quite clear: Junior was being assigned to protect Minya in the place of the downed _Gotengo_. Junior spread his arms wide and lowered his head almost to the ground.

With one last look from each of them that told Junior they were counting on him, the two monsters turned and left; Godzilla stomped off, his footsteps steadily growing fainter as he went, and Gamera, making sure he was at a far enough distance from the humans when he did so, activated his jets and lifted off, leaving behind a thick cloud of smoke in his wake. Junior stared after each of them for a moment, with the air of a soldier saluting his general, off to bring the fight to the enemy, before glancing back at Minya, who evidently was still unsure whether to trust this unexpected ally or not, and assuming a guarding position in front of him, eyes scanning the wreckage of Tokyo for any sign of an ambush.

A small moan suddenly burst the atmosphere like a balloon stuck with a needle. Looking down, the band of humans saw Craven laboriously rising to his feet, eyes closed and gingerly rubbing his temples with one hand.

"I just had the worst dream," he said, still not opening his eyes. "I dreamed that we got back to earth, but there was an army of evil Godzillas, and then a giant dinosaur and a flying turtle with big teeth."

"Uh, Dr. C?" said Randy. "That wasn't a dream."

Craven opened his eyes to glare malevolently at Randy. "You couldn't have played along for five seconds, could you?"

"Nope," answered Randy cheerfully, the sound of Craven grinding his teeth together clearly audible in the background. He turned to Captain Gordon. "So, what now?" he asked expectantly, as if the whole battle being fought was all simply some sort of game that he was waiting his turn to play.

"Now," said the Captain, voice dripping with undisguised disapproval of the teenager's disregard for the seriousness of the situation, "we wait."

"Wait?" scoffed Randy. "Don't you think there's something more useful we could do than babysit the living cross between Tyrannosaurus rex and the Pillsbury Doughboy?"

"For your information," shot Captain Gordon with a sudden vigor that surprised even himself, "that creature is the only living descendant of Godzilla. Who was the one who saved the earth from the Xilian invasion? Who's fighting off an army of monsters right now? Godzilla. And one more question: what else might be waiting out there right now for the right moment to kill us all? Let Minya die, and we've let our future die with it."

He cut himself off there - long monologues weren't exactly his thing - but continued to give Randy, who was now raising his hands as though afraid the Captain might whip out a pistol and take a shot at him, a look that would melt steel. At last the teenager spoke.

"I'm sorry, okay? All I was saying is why we got stuck with such a boring job."

Captain Gordon might have reprimanded him for acting as if this was some kind of recreational sport, if not for the fact that at that moment, the earth suddenly shook as no less than five Zillas suddenly burst out of the ground, throwing dirt and rubble into the sky and forming a circle around Minya and Junior - and the humans. Every one of them looked over at Randy accusingly.

"Still bored?" asked Elsie dryly.

"I'm good," murmured Randy as the Zillas began to close in, saliva dripping from their hungry maws.

* * *

Godzilla took long, deliberate strides forward through Tokyo, carefully surveying the scene in front of him for any sign of movement. It was odd; one would think that, even in a space as vast as Tokyo, it would be ludicrously easy to spot a multi-hundred foot daikaiju, especially as they were more than two hundred in number and had the tendency to group themselves together. Yet this was somehow not the case - either because they were simply somewhere else at the moment or because of some other, more sinister reason, Godzilla saw nothing but half-ruined and untouched buildings; he had walked far enough that he was coming to the spot where the Zillas hadn't had time to destroy any buildings yet.

Suddenly, he stopped in the middle of a street, his body immediately tense and alert. He thought he had just heard something, like a small rustle against the pavement, possibly from behind the corner of the building to his left. Godzilla strained his tiny ears for any more sounds; all he could hear was the waves calmly lapping against the edge of the nearby Tokyo Bay. Still intent on detecting the slightest noise, he sniffed the air; while many aspects of him had changed since the second dark cloud on the remote island, his dinosaurian sense of smell remained intact.

Yes there was something... a slightly sour smell, mixed with the faint yet distinctive odor of rotting fish... but there was something odd about it. Like the rest of his distant cousins, the dromaeosaurs and the tyrannosaurs and every other carnivorous dinosaur in existence, Godzilla's sense of smell worked much like a human ear, pinpointing where the source of the smell came from. But now, it didn't really seem to be coming from any specific direction. It was simply there, all around, dispersed into the cold air around him like blood in water. Cautiously, ready to fire a quick burst of plasma at the slightest hint of life, he edged around the building on the curb and peered around the corner.

There was nothing there.

A sudden, deafening noise of glass shattering and concrete being crushed pounded on Godzilla's eardrums. Before he could even turn around, something struck him hard in the middle of the back, sending him crashing to the street below as he howled in surprise and pain.

Again, before Godzilla could react to any of this, he felt the sharp, familiar agony erupt in his lower leg that told him he had been bitten by a Zilla. He felt a sudden mass of thumps rippling through the ground that signaled the imminent approach of at least three more Zillas, as far as he could tell; it was somewhat difficult for him to determine the exact number, considering the fact that he was still in the middle of being attacked by the first of them and could not see anything because his face was buried in the debris of the street. Even when each of the Zillas clamped their jaws on his remaining limbs and tail to prevent him from struggling, the pain was so intense that he couldn't separate one bite from the other. A warm liquid was running down the places the Zillas were pinning him.

Godzilla put all his effort into swinging his injured tail. As any paleontologist or kaijuologist could tell you, the members of the godzillasaur family had the most powerful and flexible tails of any carnivorous dinosaur. The theory was that a hunting godzillasaur would crouch down in the foliage near its prey until it came close enough, then suddenly rush out and incapacitate it with its tail, as their bodies only allowed them quick bursts of speed. The jaws would then only be used to finish it off once it was stunned and already on the ground.

The tail was perfectly designed for this. The muscles lining the base where the tail met the wide hips were thick and powerful. Any motion in these muscles would be amplified by the length of the rest of the tail; just a few degrees of motion would trigger a swing with an arc of over forty feet (and that was with an unmutated godzillasaur), containing enough power to crush the ribs of a fully grown hadrosaur - or, in this case, snap the neck of anything foolish enough to be holding onto it too tightly.

With a sudden whiplash of his tail, Godzilla heard a satisfying _crack_ and felt a sensation of warm relief spread throughout his tail, signaling that the now lifeless jaws had slackened and relinquished their hold.

Not waiting for his regeneration to heal his tail completely, he instead swung it as hard as he could to his right; a dull thunk and a screech of surprise told him he had met his target. The tail hit the Zilla's flank hard enough both to make it accidentally drop Godzilla's right leg and knock it into the Zilla on his corresponding arm, sending both of them tumbling to the streets in a disorderly tangle of reptilian body parts.

Again, Godzilla wasted no time for his wounds to heal; in one smooth motion, he lunged across his chest with his freed hand, dug his claws into the side of the Zilla's face, and tore it free, taking with it globs of darkly colored blood that flew into the air, several ragged hunks of flesh, and a small mound of shapeless jelly that moments before had been the Zilla's eye. The creature gave an earsplitting scream that would have easily deafened any humans nearby, had there been any, and ran blindly off, crashing straight through a building before falling into the water.

At last able to sit up without the interference of two giant lizards holding onto his arms with their teeth, Godzilla quickly took aim at the one remaining Zilla and spared just enough time for the blast of radiation that would shoot from his jaws half a second later to make it let go and send it flying into the building behind it.

He had no time to rest even after this happened, though; as he painfully clambered to his feet (the bites on his limbs and tail still weren't completely finished regenerating), he saw the two Zillas he had sent crashing into each other rising as well, and they, by contrast, were relatively unscathed.

Godzilla hesitantly began to back up as the two Zillas closed in, thinking of a plan even as his burning wounds continued to heal. He was in no condition for melee combat, and despite the fact that that would change in about a minute or so, the Zillas would have gotten tired of waiting and attacked again anyway. They would be expecting his heat ray, and would probably use the opportunity to counterattack.

He saw the two kaiju begin to hunch down as they moved, ready to spring, as he suddenly felt the heel of his foot hit open air. Making sure not to let the Zillas use the distraction as an opening, he quickly glanced down and was finally hit by the exact idea he was searching for as he saw that he was standing on the edge of Tokyo Bay.

With a roar of challenge, Godzilla dove backwards and into his true element.

* * *

Gamera spotted them from afar as he flew: a group of perhaps a dozen Zillas milling around in the ruins of the city, apparently not doing anything in particular. This struck the terrapin as odd - why weren't they organizing an attack on Minya or Godzilla? With a brief halt in the air that could be translated as a shrug, he angled his trajectory about ten degrees downward until he was level with the ground, flying directly toward the Zillas.

They didn't appear to notice him until he was only about 800 meters away, after which they all turned to face him, firmly planting their feet as if to secure themselves against the inevitable impact. Gamera might have chuckled if the Ancients had given him a way to produce or understand the sound. Did they think that bracing themselves would make any difference against anything bigger than one of the humans' diminutive cars if it was flying at them at a speed of Mach 3.5?

A sudden cloud of dust and rock blown sky high immediately obscured his vision of the Zillas before a greyish blur hit him with such force that it knocked him backwards and into the ground, banging his head against the interior of the shell so that bright lights suddenly popped in front of his eyes. The Zillas were on him in an instant; he felt two of them actually jump onto the shell, while the many rattling vibrations that erupted on all sides told him that the rest of them were trying to gnaw through the shell again.

In a flash of realization, he suddenly knew exactly what had just happened. The grey blur was a Zilla that had been hiding - had been _waiting_ - under the ground. It had leapt out of the ground at precisely the right moment and collided with Gamera in midair, which was what had robbed him of being airborne just long enough for its brothers to swarm him. He had felt so sure that they were about to be effortlessly killed that he had not realized why they weren't attacking any of his allies: they were _bait_ in a trap set for _him_.

They were persistent, he had to give them that.

A feeling of calm and security washed over the Guardian's brain, as it had the last time the Zillas had trapped him in this position. Not even Gyaos's sonic ray had been powerful enough to pierce his shell; because the only creature ever to accomplish such a feat had died five years ago, in human reckoning, he was positive to the point of being nearly smug that these pathetic creatures, for all their teamwork and, admittedly, clever battle tactics, would never be able to penetrate his organic shield.

A sharp pain suddenly flared in Gamera's left leg - the pain of something cutting though his flesh. For a brief moment, Gamera couldn't understand how a Zilla had possibly managed to fit its jaws into the hole of his shell. Then, with a jolt, he realized that it was attacking not with its teeth, but with its claws; it had stuck its arm into the shell, and now it was ripping through his flesh.

Before Gamera could react to this in any way, the same feeling of something piercing his skin shot through his other limbs as well, one by one; it seemed that the other Zillas were following their brother's example. Catching sight of the scaly arm reaching for his face, Gamera automatically sent a plasma ball ripping clean through it. An agonized howl betrayed to the Guardian that he had succeeded in blasting the kaiju's arm off as its thundering footfalls faded into the distance.

Gamera activated all of his jets at the same time just for an instant, just to make the Zillas pull back their arms, then ignited his two rear jets for the purposes of flying away. The instant relief of pressure on the top of his shell preceding the two dull _thumps_ that happened a second later told Gamera that the two Zillas on top had lost their footing and slipped off, just as he had planned. He felt himself beginning to fly off.

Suddenly, however, a great weight smote the top of the shell, and the turtle felt himself slam into the ground once more. Because he had only just started to lift off, he had not yet reached his maximum height and velocity, and this had allowed another of the Zillas to leap on top of his shell before he could go further than two hundred meters. Instantly, Gamera felt the Zillas begin to claw at his supposedly protected arms and legs once more.

If kaiju thought in words, Gamera might have been thinking something along the lines of, _Well, I can safely say that I am now officially screwed._

* * *

A small hope blossomed inside Ozaki: maybe the Zillas wouldn't realize that Junior wasn't on their side, and that would give him an opportunity to catch them by surprise and kill them all before they could do anything to him or Minya. However, this notion was quelled instantly by how the Zillas were looking at their uncle; seeing him standing alongside Minya without doing anything to him seemed to have instantly given away his allegiances. The first Zilla must have simply been a bit slow.

Junior roared defiantly at the monsters surrounding him, constantly twisting his neck and body around to be sure one of them wouldn't attack him or the now-trembling Minya when he wasn't looking. However, the air was suddenly full of their answering bellows as they all either charged or jumped at him, jaws snapping and claw-tipped hands reaching outward.

With amazingly accurate timing, Junior ducked and swept his tail across the ground at the same time, causing the two Zillas that had leaped into the air to collide and tripping two of the ones that had decided to run at the same time. But there was no time to celebrate; the fifth had vaulted over his tail and was now flying right at Minya. There was a quick _whoosh_ and a loud roar from Junior before a stream of green flame tore into the Zilla's stomach and knocked it off course. Based on the snapping sound that accompanied its crash into the ground, Ozaki assumed its back had broken from the fall.

Not wasting an instant, Junior lunged downward with his jaws onto one of the fallen, but not dead, Zillas that now surrounded him. The teeth punctured the fleshy throat easily, sending blood pouring out onto the ground and not even giving the Zilla the chance to roar at the pain before its life ended.

The other Zillas were all trying to get to their feet, but Junior was one step ahead. Without even turning around, he slammed the head of the Zilla behind him into the ground with his tail. The other two were now on their feet, but another burst of radioactive fire kept them at bay. The Zilla on the ground tried to rise again, but cried out in pain as the tail came down upon its head a second time. It gave one last, feeble attempt to raise its head before the third blow from the tail crushed its skull, causing blood and liquified brain tissue to gather in a pool around it.

As soon as Junior's breath weapon stopped coming forth, the two Zillas bellowed cries of challenge and sprinted forward. This time, Junior was the one that jumped into the air; he hit the closer Zilla and pushed off backwards with his legs, both sending the monster flying away and propelling himself into a perfect backflip before landing nimbly on his feet.

The second Zilla gave no sign that anything had happened to his brother, instead snapping at his smaller relative's head. Junior dropped low so that the attack went wide, then counterattacked by hopping upward, causing the spines on his back to pierce the Zilla's chest in several places.

Throughout all of this, the humans were primarily concerned with running left and right so as not to be crushed underfoot, nd so far they had just barely succeeded. When the Zillas had initially charged Junior, one of them had sent its massive foot crashing down a mere twenty feet away. Now they once again found themselves, to use an extreme understatement, too close for comfort.

"MOVE!" bellowed the Captain unnecessarily, as the two monsters fought within three hundred feet of where they were standing. However, one of their number did not comply; NIGEL, for some unfathomable reason, was rolling directly toward the two kaiju.

"NIGEL, wait!" yelled Craven, turning around but apparently unable to work up the nerve to actually go after the robot.

"Get to the chopper!" came NIGEL's reply in a voice that sounded strikingly similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger's. Craven looked just as confused as Ozaki felt. "Get to the chopper now!"

Above, Junior summoned another blast of radioactive flame and fired it directly into the Zilla's wounds, scorching its internal organs. After a short pause, the Zilla slowly swayed one way, then the other, then finally began to fall - right on top of NIGEL.

Still impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger, NIGEL managed to squeeze out, "You are one ugly motherf-"

Then the kaiju crashed to the ground and crushed the robot underneath it, leaving only a loud noise that sounded halfway between an alarm and a yell that issued from NIGEL's speakers to echo in Ozaki's ears as its disembodied head bounced out from the cloud of dust the impact threw up before coming to a rest at his feet.

"_NIGEL!" _screamed Craven, before throwing Randy, who had suddenly seemed to find the fingernails on his right hand intensely interesting, a singularly furious look as Ozaki stared on uncomprehendingly in the background.

The one remaining Zilla hunched down and clawed at the earth, partially obscuring itself in a mass of flying dirt and concrete before it disappeared underground. Junior immediately jumped into the air, angling his nose downward as if about to dive into a pool of water. For an instant, Ozaki was sure that Junior's head was going to crash into the ground. Instead, to his astonishment, he burrowed so fast in this manner that he really did seem like he had just dived straight into the ground.

There was a few short moments where there was nothing but the distant rumblings of the ground underneath them to reveal that there was even anything underground. Then, a bright green light shone from both holes in the ground and there was a dying scream that Ozaki was fairly confident did not belong to Junior.

* * *

Godzilla felt the pleasantly cool waters of the ocean wrap around his bruised and bleeding body like a mother's embrace. It brought more relief to him than the feeling of lying down in bed would to a human teenager after a long day of bottomless schoolwork. The sea was a sanctuary to him, had protected him from the dark cloud that had incinerated his family, had always offered refuge. For a moment, the kaiju wanted nothing more than to close his eyes, relax his aching body, and let himself drift with the current... it would be such a relief to rest... to sleep for a week, two weeks...

But then the waves and two low-pitched splashing sounds that signaled the Zillas' dive into the water brought him sharply back to reality. Aiming his nose earthward, Godzilla rapidly descended to the sea floor.

While the highly unique hunting style of the godzillasaurs involving the tail was certainly a fascinating concept to scientists, what had really caught the attention of the paleontological community was the tail's second function. Paleontologists had been baffled for years as to why they were commonly finding Godzillasaurus skeletons in layers of sedimentary rock alongside the ocean-dwelling ickthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Finally, one Japanese paleontologist, Dr Tomoyuki Tanaka, published evidence that the godzillasaurs could actually swim, something no dinosaur was actually designed for. He pointed out the tail, which was easily powerful enough to propel the creature through the water, and the abnormally large cavity where the lungs would normally be found. He calculated that an adult Godzillasaurus would be able to hold its breath underwater for over an hour before having to come up for air again.

As a matter of fact, thanks to his mutation, Godzilla never technically had to come up for air at all. His lungs could now filter oxygen out of the water like a fish's gills, yet still function as regular lungs while on land. He could also use this ability to cycle additional oxygen in or out of his body at will to affect his buoyancy and allow more freedom underwater. However, he retained his original method of swimming; his arms and legs were pressed tightly to his sides, allowing the water to slip over them, while his powerful tail beat the water from side to side like an immense crocodile.

Glancing back brought him no extra comfort, however; the Zillas were clearly as comfortable underwater as he was. They swam behind him the same way he did, using their tails for locomotion while their limbs were flattened against their bodies to reduce water resistance. The only anatomical difference, had he known it, was that their lungs couldn't recycle air from the water like his could, and even then that didn't help him very much.

However, Godzilla knew he had the advantage. It may have simply been the soothing effects of the water that caused him to feel especially reassured, but he could tell that the Zillas, despite their obviously superior agility on land, could not swim any faster than he could. And on land, other than their savage combat instincts and team coordination, that was about all they had going for them.

With a snakelike twist, Godzilla suddenly turned around to face the two Zillas head-on. The two kaiju, momentarily startled, reflexively reverted from their swimming positions to defensive ones. Seizing the opportunity, Godzilla grabbed one of them by the shoulders and swung it into the other, causing both of them to spiral pathetically through the murky water before regaining their sense of direction a few seconds later, by which point Godzilla had charged a powerful enough nuclear breath attack to instantly incinerate them both - the water didn't impede his energy weapon.

Sensing vibrations through the water, Godzilla turned and followed their direction until he found the source: the Zilla whose eye he had gouged out was writhing in the water like an injured worm. The water around it was a faint shade of crimson, most intensely so on the path its head carved through the gloom. He could smell the blood clearly.

Godzilla took careful aim, summoned the radioactive energies from within his body, felt them travel up his back, collect in the back of his throat, and then-

A sudden wave of vibrations through the water was the only warning he received before something rammed him in the back so hard that not only was his aim severely thrown off, but the attack came perilously close to hitting his legs, both of which were now almost healed. Godzilla didn't have to turn around to see his assailant; what was clearly the Zilla he had shaken off his left leg with a small heat ray, based on the burns on its face, swam over his shoulder. Fortunately, it seemed to have cut itself on his dorsal fins when it had hit him, because there were now a large number of shallow wounds on the front half of its body that painted the water red as it moved.

But before Godzilla could attack this Zilla as well as the other, he felt the telltale vibrations behind him once again, and quickly slithered through the water to one side and turned around at the same time with a single motion of his tail. He saw another Zilla fly past him, along with a total of six others that had lagged far enough behind not to be taken by this evasion, instead changing their course so that they were heading at him.

It seemed that the Zilla from before had brought reinforcements.

Godzilla allowed himself to hover gracefully in place as they closed in on him, mouths wide. Making sure his timing was right, his body gave a sudden twist and sent his tail flying outwards, striking four of the Zillas full on in the face. One of them shifted its course so that it was able to dodge the attack in time and circle around for another run. The other, however, managed to weave under the attack and land a blow on Godzilla's side with its claws as it passed.

He didn't have to turn himself around - the attack automatically did that for him. The two Zillas that had dodged his attack met at a single point and turned in sync like fighter planes flying in attack formation, coming right at him. Godzilla, however, had enough of this flashiness; he charged up a respectable amount of radiation and promptly blasted the two monsters out of existence before they could even attempt to evade the attack.

Turning now to the Zillas he had temporarily incapacitated, he suddenly found his view rather obscured by a pair of burned, rectangular jaws sparkling with sharp fangs mere feet from his face.

The Zilla bit down on Godzilla's head with enough force to cause him to feel momentarily lightheaded. He shook the feeling off (or as best as he could while the jaws remained latched onto his head) and lashed out at the Zilla as hard as he could with his right fist. The blow was so powerful that it actually appeared to expel the air from its lungs, judging by all the bubbles that cascaded upwards from its mouth when the punch landed. The Zilla paid Godzilla no more heed as it struggled panickingly to the surface.

The other three Zillas, however, had used the distraction to form a circle around Godzilla, and he could tell both by sight and by the vibrations coming from the areas outside of his peripheral vision that they were all closing in on him at the same time. But the Zillas, while just as fast as their Japanese counterpart, were only a few months old, and therefore did not have nearly the same amount of experience. Godzilla pumped air out of his lungs, causing him to abruptly sink, so that the Zillas all crashed into each other above him and he had a clear shot and ample amount of time to charge up the heat beam that blasted from his jaws a moment later to send all three of them to oblivion.

He cleared the litter of ash, blood, and body parts that remained behind and looked up. The Zilla with the burned face was descending straight down upon Godzilla like a peregrine falcon stooping on an unsuspecting pigeon. Godzilla waited, intending to counterattack at just the right moment, but suddenly he felt pain blossom on his neck and left side; out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the one-eyed Zilla had gotten a good enough hold on itself to coordinate an attack on him, albeit a wild and imprecise one that merely seemed to involve tearing him to shreds and nothing else. Even so, the attack was all the more savage for that, and soon nearly the entire right side of his body was decorated with bright red lines that leaked their color into the water.

With a swing of his tail, Godzilla spun forty-five degrees to the right. There was a brief instant where he could feel the Zilla clawing at his back, then it suddenly stopped; as he had planned, it had blindly impaled itself on his spines.

Deciding that there was no time to look upward, Godzilla dove forward into a frontflip, sending his tail spiraling out in a circular arc parallel to the ground. He felt the dull feeling of contact between his tail and the top of the Zilla's skull that signaled that he had met his mark, while a distant _crack_ echoed in his ears. Righting himself, Godzilla saw the limp body of the Zilla slowly drifting to the ocean depths, its neck bent at an odd angle.

Sparing a moment for a long roar of victory that could be heard underwater for miles around, Godzilla turned in what he guessed was the general direction of Minya and set off.

* * *

Gamera activated his jets again, and, predictably, all the arms were instantly withdrawn. Gamera, slowly at first because of the Zillas still on top of him, began to spin himself around while still resting on the ground. When he eventually reached such a speed that both of them were thrown off, he shot off again as suddenly as he could manage, turning himself rightside up in the air as he did so.

Again, he felt something strike the top of the shell, but he had achieved his objective: he had been able to travel too far for one of the Zillas to jump full on the shell like it had last time. Though the shell wobbled haphazardly in midair for a second, it was able to keep going without crashing to the ground again. Gamera felt another blow hit the shell, but this time it was light and relatively unnoticeable.

The Guardian flew back to where he knew Junior and Minya were, but the sound of footfalls close behind him told him that the thirteen Zillas were still in hot pursuit.

* * *

Junior was catching a breather after his battle with the five Zillas as Minya tried (for the most part, unsuccessfully) to control his hyperventilating. The humans were following their examples - both of them.

"Is this..." said Monique, pausing every few words to catch her breath again, "what you... Americans call... a trip to... hell and back?"

"You don't know... the half of it," answered the Captain, whose hand was clutching his chest as though trying to prevent something inside it from escaping.

A high-pitched snarl from Junior caused them all to look up. He was no longer kneeling close to he ground, but instead tense, staring unblinkingly in the opposite direction with a look of determined anticipation in his eyes.

"What's wrong with him?" Elsie asked Nick, but he shook his head.

"I don't know."

"Do you think he's sensed something?" asked Captain Gordon (Craven gave a seemingly involuntary whimper).

"Wait," said Ozaki. He paused, nodded to himself, then said, "I can feel it too."

"Feel what?"

But it didn't take long for the rest of them to detect it: there was a set of faint footfalls coming from the direction Junior was looking at so intently. Those who had guns hefted them to a firing stance. Within thirty seconds, a dark shape became visible several thousand meters away, walking with a steady pace toward their position... the grips on the guns tightened...

All of them, Junior included, seemed to recognize the shape at the same time; it was Godzilla, marching to them quietly, yet with an air of moderate satisfaction. It took a second for the humans to realize, however, that he was bleeding slightly on one side. But even as they watched, the wounds, already small or recently healed already, knitted themselves together and closed up. Godzilla took a look at Minya, who squeaked at him joyfully, to make sure he was okay, then turned to Junior and gave him a low bob of his head that was almost a bow that clearly said, _Thank you._ Junior nodded back.

A slight crease, barely visible, appeared between Godzilla's eyes, and sniffed the air, as if in doubt. He turned in the opposite direction that Junior had faced when he had felt his footsteps, scanning the horizon. Just as he did this, the humans heard a familiar, raspy, high-pitched grating sound that continuously changed its pitch. Turning, they spotted, to their relief, a pale, flickering light traveling over the horizon. Gamera was there within moments, landing on the ground in a slide that carried him for a few hundred meters before he gained complete control of his motion again.

However, no sooner had he come to a stop than the humans felt footsteps, lots of footsteps, coming from the direction Gamera had come from. It was not long before the distant silhouettes of a dozen or more Zillas became visible.

"Bah," said Randy with a scornful wave of his hand in their direction. "We've got three monsters right here. They can handle it."

But Ozaki, as well as each of the kaiju, had become quiet and still, as if concentrating on something far away. Slowly, an unmistakable look of complete and absolute horror took over the mutant's face.

"What? What is it, Ozaki?" demanded Captain Gordon urgently, but at that precise moment he felt it too: a low rumbling through the ground, growing more violent and intense with every passing second. It felt not like a set of footfalls, but an earthquake... a huge earthquake...

Minya screamed as it gradually became visible: not just from the direction of the thirteen approaching Zillas, but everywhere, all around, in a complete circle, were small, dark shapes that approached them as the trembling of the earth grew stronger and stronger.

In a minute that seemed to stretch into eternity, yet passed far too quickly, the shapes became terribly clear.

The entire army of Zillas surrounded the four kaiju and seven humans, the light of bloodlust in their eyes.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

In that one moment, there was nothing. And yet... there was everything.

There was not one single tremor of anticipation in the calf muscles of the Zillas that surrounded their foes so completely, nor even a shiver of fear running down the humans' spines. The crackling of the fires that struggled to keep up their existence in the piles of rubble that had once been proud skyscrapers seemed suddenly muted; not so much as a hiss escaped through the teeth of any creature present. It seemed impossible for such a huge assembly of destructive power not to simply unleash waves of death to forever scorch the world, let alone be so silent, and so still. No motion, no sound - _nothing._

And yet... it was exactly because of this great Nothing that Everything was able to thrive. For right then, right there, all hung in the balance.

Resolute, unvanquishable, numerous as grains of sand on a beach, stood the entire Zilla army, the most formidable force the planet ever had and ever would see. Greater even than the Gyaos swarm that had besieged Kyoto five years before; powerful and clever though they might have been individually, add more numbers to them and one would find that their proportional effectiveness dropped exponentially. In 1995, Gamera faced off against just one Super Gyaos, and he would have been vanquished if not for the rejuvenating properties that flame had on the terrapin and the inner strength of the human he was bonded to. By contrast, in 1999, in downtown Shibuya he engaged _two_ Hyper Gyaos simultaneously, both of which were even larger and more powerful than their predecessor, and walked away with no more serious injury than a shallow cut on his arm. And the invading Xilians, for all their talk of exterminating humankind, had in fact wiped out less than a quarter of the world's population. The humans may have been temporarily beaten back, but with time to organize themselves, would the scattered pockets of survivors not have united and eventually taken back their planet?

But the Zillas were different. While individually, each was a cowardly weakling who could be brought down with a few mere missiles, the presence of others gave them new strength. They abandoned their urge to flee before an enemy and instead used those same abilities to wreak havoc on a foe, multiplying their effectiveness through coordinated teamwork and sheer ferocious instinct. And when the immediate battle was won, their offspring would do what the Xilians couldn't; dig down to where mankind had taken root against the onslaught, and destroy it from the inside.

And standing against them, the world's single last hope, that one flickering candle that just barely continued to hold back the impending darkness, was the minuscule band of valiant defenders. A mixed group of humans, two of them the soldiers that had helped turn the tide against the alien assailants that threatened to destroy all human civilization, and the remainders the facilitators of defending the planet from the more minor threats that, left on their own, would have slowly but surely chipped away at the world's resistance until it crumbled. The Guardian of the Universe, maintainer of the throne while its master was absent, making sure that no threats that exploited its absence would ever triumph. The spiritual counterpart to the throne's master, protecting the world on a constant basis from the combined weight of the small, constantly moving pieces in the game of domination of the globe, its position in the final battle tragically ironic due to the fact that it was being forced to battle with its own blood relations. The heir to the throne, now underdeveloped, out of place, wounded, and the most vulnerable to attack. And the throne's owner, the King of the Monsters, a living vessel of unimaginable fury and unbreakable will, dedicated to blasting all that threatened it and the planet's continued survival out of existence.

There the two forces stood, motionlessly opposing each other, silently daring the other to make the first move. They were like statues crafted by an ancient warlord, locked in combat stances for eternity, all the while the dangerously thin thread that kept them from leaping at each other and staining the ground with the other's blood threatened to snap. In that moment, time itself paused to observe the two sides of yin and yang pushing against the other, each trying to reduce its opposite to powder, before the true battle commenced.

And then the moment was broken.

Though there were less than three hundred Zillas present, it seemed like a thousand furious howls crying for fresh blood ripped through the air as the Zillas all charged. The sheer combined force of all their footfalls resembled nothing so much as a raging earthquake, instantly knocking all but the kaiju and Ozaki off their feet.

The mutant couldn't afford to waste any time considering if he _could_ do it, despite his inner doubts about it when his crewmen met their deaths. He immediately summoned up all the power he could manage given the circumstances and simultaneously formed a shield around the humans and used a surge of kinetic energy to knock a Zilla coming straight at them aside. He could neither acknowledge its death, reduced to a mass of churning blood, flattened tissue, and crushed bone by the weight of its brothers trampling it, nor take a moment to rest - he had shove aside his exhaustion and force himself to deflect the path of yet another Zilla, even as he was blinded by the wall of flame blasting forth from the Zillas' jaws.

Godzilla and Zilla Jr. stood back to back, firing their breath weapons at the incoming horde and sweeping their heads in wide arcs to thin the enemy forces as much as possible while staying on the alert for the Zillas that attempted to leap directly into their midst, as smoke began to pour out of Gamera's arm and leg holes. Many of the Zillas unleashed their own oral weapons as soon as they were in range, turning the air in front of them into a rushing sea of fire. The two braced themselves for its impact, but it never came; with an upward, two-armed sweeping gesture from the Guardian, the flames flew over their heads. All of it collected into one concentrated stream that went directly into Gamera's mouth, and at that instant, as if he had been waiting for exactly that to happen, he took off, the interior of his mouth still burning that fierce shade of orange.

Gamera hovered directly over the center, spinning so rapidly that only a smoking white-orange blur was visible. Even as more fire erupted below, all of it diverted away from the defenders and into a barrier than spun in sync with the shell. The trace of orange that came from Gamera's mouth steadily brightened over a period of several seconds as thin streams of fire from the ground-based wall traveled into the sky to be absorbed into his body until the entire structure was gone, by which time the kaiju's airborne form looked like a flaming halo. And then, just when it seemed that the light couldn't get any brighter, a stream of plasma balls, like bullets from a machine gun, launched in rapid-fire sequence from the hole where Gamera's head was concealed. They rained down on the entire army in every direction, blowing scorched body parts of the Zillas into the sky and gouging huge craters in the earth.

But though dozens of them were killed by the hand of Godzilla, Junior, and Gamera, their lives taken by hot plasma and their scorched remains crushed by their brothers, it seemed that two more charged forth for each one that fell. Like floodwater rushing from a broken dam, they continued to close in on the group of defenders, until they were so dense that even the overlapping fire provided by Godzilla and Junior were not enough to keep them from coming into melee range. Minya screamed especially loudly as Gamera landed and the three boxed him in, shielding him with their bodies, as the army reached the center.

What might have seemed to be chaos in Captain Gordon's eyes when he battled the group of seven Zillas in Osaka was nothing compared to this. This was not the same battle as what had started when Godzilla had risen out of Tokyo Bay. Now there was _no_ pause in the onslaught, _no_ combat tactics, and _no_ sense of what was going on. It seemed that with every second another Zilla landed a blow, every second the heat from a fire blast stung their skin, every second yet another one squeezed into another attack position. There were times when the kaiju found it more beneficial to fight with their eyes shut; they presented a major weak point, and the Zillas were so thick and so numerous that seeing them wasn't required.

The defenders didn't even have to time their attacks right, nor aim their breath weapons when their assailants grew too thick around them and they had no choice, even at the risk of accidentally harming Minya in the process. One punch was guaranteed to to knock down at least one Zilla, and those that fell down rarely got up again as their packmates trampled them as if they were already no more than corpses. A tail swipe, for those that could perform it, might take down as many as four at a time. And a beam weapon with a long enough sweep and enough energy behind it could sometimes kill over half a dozen.

Likewise, the Zilla army possessed none of the strategy and coordination that they had while fighting individual enemies in small groups - and they didn't need to. All they needed was more bodies to throw at the defenders, steadily weakening them until their exhaustion overcame their determination and they could be safely picked off one by one. They may not have had individual strength or any intent or method of preserving those lives as their foes did, but they had something far more useful to them, and that was numbers to spare. If a Zilla inflicted just one wound upon one of the enemy kaiju before its life was extinguished, then that was a sacrifice worth making.

The humans, or some of them, were playing their part as well. While the majority of HEAT was reduced to pressing their hands against their ears and praying that the next second's events did not include being stepped on, Monique used her Tachyon laser rifle to assist Captain Gordon and Nick, both of whom were unloading the remaining power charges in their maser rifles into the distracted Zillas' unprotected backs, as Ozaki covered their frontside. While three infantry-based weapons were not strong enough to defeat a Zilla unless it continued to take fire for an extended period of time, more than one time the monsters spun around to see what was biting into the backs of their legs, only for a well-placed attack from Junior or Gamera to down them permanently from behind.

Still, this could only go on for so long. Even for a kaiser, and even with the half-second breaks he received in between telekinetically shoving a 40,000 ton mutant lizard out of its path, the amount of exhaustion on behalf of Ozaki was rapidly taking its toll.

"Brace yourselves!" he screamed over the raging maelstrom of combat noise surrounding them before, with a single reverse twitch of his arm, he sent all of them flying backward and into the protective ring formed by the defenders just as a huge reptilian foot plowed through the ground they had just been standing on. Pausing only to make sure nothing had broken when they hit the ground, those with weapons returned to firing them between their allies and at the Zillas, while Ozaki's body began to glow orange as he concentrated on replenishing his energy. He again experienced that same feeling of supernatural awareness - it was almost like seeing, but like everything that he 'saw' was, in however small a way, linked to him somehow. And that was how he perceived his allies' intent.

It happened at the exact same time: Godzilla was spun around by the force of his own tail swipe, the same happened to Gamera when he stabbed a Zilla with his elbow spike through its eye socket, and Junior whirled 180 degrees so that an incoming Zilla was stabbed by his dorsal fins through the heart before it could do more than let out a squeak. At that moment, all three of them stood facing each other, as streams of blood ran down their bodies and their foes surrounded them just as surely as they had when the final round had begun. And when their eyes all met, something was communicated by Godzilla to his allies. Ozaki had no idea what nor how it was expressed, but he knew that whatever and however it was, it had happened right then through their eye contact. Junior and Gamera's faces both immediately morphed as much as possible for their anatomy into expressions that plainly said, _"Don't,"_ but Godzilla's stayed fiercely resolute as ever. Then the moment was gone, the defenders' expressions returned to their grimly determined state, and Ozaki knew that whatever plan Godzilla had just given them was going to be executed _now._

Until this point, Gamera had been diverting part of his attention to redirecting the constant walls of flame into thin, concentrated beams that shot directly back down the throats of the same Zillas that had produced them, burning through their throats and leaving them to suffocate; any of the attacks could potentially pass between the defenders' bodies and hit Minya. But now all of the fiery blasts instantly shot upward, collecting into a rapidly expanding fireball that rotated ominously in the center of the dark sky. The Zillas' eyes gleamed wickedly in the orange glow. The flaming sphere continued to grow larger and larger, like a balloon being fed helium, until-

The humans' only warning was a crackling _whoosh _the fireball unfolded into a dome that settled over them like a vast tent, barricading them from the attacking Zilla army. The only thing that penetrated the wall was more than a dozen dying screams accompanied by a corresponding number of blackened bodies of Zillas that had been too late to avoid ramming themselves directly into the flames. This brought them little comfort, however; immediately, it felt like they were in an extremely hot sauna, and all the fire was burning their oxygen supply fast.

As if he had been rehearsing the timing, Junior moved beside the humans and lowered his torso parallel to the ground. Behind him, Gamera was doing the same thing to Minya. With the promptings of, "Go, go go!" from Nick, they began climbing on the monster's back. While his triple rows of dorsal fins seemed relatively smooth when viewed from a distance, up close they could see that they and the points where they connected with his spine were covered in small pits and bumps - extremely reliable, if not comfortable, hand- and footholds. Minya used what seemed to be the majority of his remaining strength to clamor up on top of Gamera and wedge his fingers underneath the scutes on his shell.

When everyone was aboard, Junior, to the extreme displeasure of Craven, rose up to his full height. Likewise, Gamera braced against the ground with his arms, tucked his back legs into his shell, and turned on his rear jets in preparation. All heads turned to Godzilla, who was standing firm as stone. The dome of pure flame silhouetted his form while simultaneously illuminating it, giving the kaiju a truly godlike air. Even Gamera and Junior seemed slightly in awe.

The King turned to each of them in turn, sending them messages so plain he might as well have spoken in plain English, except that mere words could not express the emotion that shook them to their cores.

First, he gave a nod to the humans on Junior's back: _Thank you for defending my son._

He shifted his gaze so that it rested on Junior. His nod said, _Thank you for fighting alongside us._

He turned to Gamera and gave another nod:_ Thank you for turning the tide._

His last was for Minya. For the first time, he seemed to slightly falter as he gazed at his son, who looked somewhere between confused and scared at what was about to happen. For just one moment, a single tear in one of his eyes glimmered orange from the light of both the flaming shield and the depths of the eye that it came from. Then, in what was more of a mournful bow of his head than a nod, he said:

_Goodbye._

The dome suddenly withdrew, funneling into a huge tubular mass that shot through the army of Zillas. At the same time, Gamera shot forward along the ground and Junior sprinted after it. The fire carved a swath through the mob, either by causing the Zillas it was heading towards to scatter or by simply burning them down, leaving a wide path for Gamera and Junior to move through before the army reassembled itself back into place. Junior kept stride alongside the Guardian as both of their passengers focused on holding on as tight as they could. With incredible speed they broke out of the mass of Zillas, and kept moving as far away from them as fast as they could afford.

Perhaps if they had not been encompassed by their pack mentality, some of them might have pursued, but all their attention was reserved for the one kaiju that stood alone and vulnerable directly in their midst. All of them charged forth, seeking to bury the King under a mass of flesh until his life was at last relinquished. Godzilla held them off with a last burst of savagery, punching and biting and tail-swiping anything that got within range, until his energy gave out and the Zillas succeeded in knocking him on his back. They swarmed all over him like sharks in a feeding frenzy, and all varieties of pain he knew were shoved into those few seconds, breaking his bones and shredding his flesh. By that point he was already summoning the last stores of the nuclear energy that remained in his body, augmenting it exponentially, radiating it through his fins, spreading it all over his body...

Junior and Gamera were some distance away when it began. Barely visible through the blanket of Zillas, a pale blue light, just like that of Godzilla's nuclear breath, glowed faintly. It continued to gain intensity over a period of several seconds before it abruptly flared a brilliant red.

"Spiral Ray," murmured Captain Gordon to Ozaki. But something was wrong. There was no sign of the Spiral Ray firing - the light just continued to burn brighter and brighter, until beams of it were stabbing out from between the Zillas like searchlights.

And then it happened: the Spiral Nuclear Pulse.

The sight came first. The image of the swarming Zillas was instantly replaced by an enormous, orange-white explosion that burned its image into the retinas of everyone watching. They all screamed and shielded their eyes from the blinding light, but even with their eyes closed it seemed to shine just as brightly, as if a star had descended to Earth.

Next came the feeling. It wasn't at all like the steadily building earthquake caused by the charge of the Zilla army - it seemed like the planet itself chose that moment to jerk five feet down, nearly blasting Junior and Gamera off their feet and dislodging their passengers. Even from there, they could feel the heat coming off of it; between it and the atmosphere of the fire dome's interior, the former was unquestionably hotter.

The last thing to hit them was the sound. The air-shattering _BOOM_ was every bit as deafening as the combined screams from all the Zillas, and far more devastating. It felt like it literally smashed itself against their eardrums, as if it was specifically trying to cause them as much pain as possible. It seemed like it had been slowed down digitally so that it continued to last on, all the while the volume not decreasing at all for more than ten seconds.

The blast finally began to die down. The explosion had mushroomed over three thousand feet into the air easily before its edges began to dissipate into the air. The shaking gradually dropped in intensity, while the air steadily cooled down in proportion. The huge sound seemed like it was trying to hold onto its existence for as long as possible before it was claimed and promptly swallowed up completely by the winds.

All traces of the Zilla army were gone, so totally that it seemed that the explosion had simply wiped them out of the space-time continuum. The only testament to their existence was a huge ashen crater where they had stood just moments before, over ten times the size of the one that had formed when Gorath had impacted.

It might have been a time to celebrate, under other circumstances. But no sense of victory flooded the minds of the defenders as they stood watching that spot. Because all of them were too busy thinking one thing:

Where was Godzilla?

Minya called out for his father with the loudest vocalization he had made his whole short life. His only reply was an echo. Fiercely, he seemed to completely forget his wounds as he stood up straight and sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him to the center of the crater. Junior and Gamera glanced over to each other devastatedly for a moment, then, with the former first stopping to allow the humans to climb on his back again, followed him. As they drew nearer, they spotted some large, dark shape lying inert on the ground, directly where the nuclear pulse had issued from. But it couldn't be - it wasn't-

But it was.

There, completely motionless, lay the body of Godzilla.

His eyes were closed, he was tilted slightly to one direction on his back, and his mouth just slightly open; he could have been sleeping if not for the fresh wounds that covered his body, or the absence of the rise and fall of his chest that meant he was breathing. His body was already cold to the touch, his internal nuclear energies all completely expended by that last attack.

Minya screamed at the body again, in a futile attempt to wake his father. Because he was just asleep, he had to be, he couldn't be - could never - ..._die._ When nothing happened, he started to pound on Godzilla's chest, punching him, kicking him, screaming all the while. But Godzilla's form didn't so much as twitch, as if mocking its son in the truth of its final defeat.

Gamera and Junior hung their heads mournfully and closed their eyes, and thick, boiling tears began to collect in the corners of their eyelids. Elsie turned and buried her face in Craven's shoulder, sobbing into it as he held her. Even Monique's shoulders began to tremble, and Randy put one arm over her shoulder comfortingly, to which she did not object. It was clear in the teenager's face that he had no intention or desire to make an attempt at lightening up the situation. Nick, Ozaki, and Captain Gordon, the only ones who could manage to, put their hands on their hearts and looked at the still figure as Minya fell to his knees in despair and Gamera and Junior simultaneously gave a roar to the sky, a tribute to their fallen comrade.

Technically, they had won. The Zillas were gone at last, the threat they posed to the world finished. But not a single thought of that bloomed in the minds of any of them, human or kaiju. The fact that the mighty King of the Monsters was dead blocked out all other thought. It was the same, as far as they were concerned, as if the Zillas had killed him themselves and left his mangled body for all to see before returning to the ocean. If there were some way to travel back in time, just a few minutes, and come up with another way to kill the Zillas, each one would have taken it, even at the risk of the Zillas winning. Anything would be better than this. Nor was there any way to restore him; Gamera would hardly dare use any very large amount of Earth's mana after what he had been forced to do to kill Legion - there were still Gyaos eggs left in the world. And even if he tried, it would be useless - not only was it unknown whether Godzilla could even harness its energy like Gamera could, but not even mana had the ability to bring anyone back from the dead.

And then, as they mourned the fallen king, something happened. Something none of them could have predicted. Something miraculous, incomprehensible, incredible.

Godzilla's eyes snapped open.

It made no sound, but it seemed almost like everybody sensed it happen, and all of them looked up at the same time. There was no any reaction at first as Godzilla clambered to his feet, they were so shocked. All of them just stared as he stood straight and tall, despite the gashes and bruises that covered his body, and wondered if they were hallucinating it all. But when Godzilla looked around him to find that the Zillas were obliterated and threw his head back in a bellow of victory, they knew it was no dream. Godzilla was back.

Minya would have knocked his father over if he had been any bigger than he was when he collided with Godzilla's leg. He squeezed it and pressed his face into it like he never wanted to let go. Junior took a small step forward and made a bow while Gamera unleashed a triumphant roar into the sky that echoed for miles around.

The humans, meanwhile, were shouting and cheering and whooping with joy. Joy for both the fact that Godzilla was alive and because now it was beginning to hit them: the battle was finished. No more Zillas. The world, at last, was safe. Monique turned to the side and embraced Randy, while Elsie took the more upfront approach and kissed Craven full on the mouth before running over to the rest of her teammates, leaving him in a sort of daze. Ozaki and the Captain both collapsed to the ground; all the effort of the night finally seemed to be affecting them, and now suddenly all they wanted to do was rest. Even so, they looked at each other and grinned before sharing a joyously weary high five.

But something bothered him. He forced himself to get off the ground and he stopped Elsie for a moment.

"He was dead," he said with a kind of wonder. "We saw him, and he wasn't breathing. How is this possible?"

To his surprise, she flashed him a grin, shrugged, and replied simply, "It isn't." With that, she gave him a brief hug and ran off again to join the rest of HEAT.

Once the euphoria had the chance to die down slightly, somebody offhandedly questioned how they were going to get back. The Captain replied rather sleepily that the EDF would no doubt send a patrol ship to search for them. In the meantime, there were more important things to pay attention to.

Godzilla and Minya stood alongside each other, facing Gamera and Junior; it seemed that they were about to leave. Both of the latter two started to bow again, but two beams of radioactive plasma impacting the ground directly below them caused them to reflexively snap their heads back up. When they did, Godzilla was already bowing to them, with Minya mimicking him and actually almost making the gesture look somewhat dignified. Then all four of the kaiju lifted their heads to the sky and fired their breath weapons. The attacks mixed and formed shimmering colors that reflected off the clouds, all coming together in a small explosion that nonetheless lit up the sky as Gamera's plasma ball detonated. They all looked at each other one more time, then Godzilla and Minya turned to wade out into the sea as Gamera turned on all his jets, lifted off, and flew over the horizon. Junior turned to Nick, who nodded to him as if in affirmative, then strode out into the waters and disappeared. The humans all watched the places where the kaiju disappeared until there was nothing left to look at.

And so they waited for an EDF ship to come, and one did within just a few hours. They all went back to the base and were provided with beds, which they accepted gladly. When they woke, they would be subject to a detailed retelling of the battle, but for now, they and all the other heroes needed to rest, whether it was in a bed or the bottom of the sea.

But they did forget one thing, however...

What about the eggs the Zillas laid in Tokyo?

* * *

A/N: Okay, I will rant awhile about the chapter, but first thing's first: I am _not_ making a sequel. I know some people will probably expect it with that cliffhanger ending - in fact, several reviews would probably be asking for a sequel even if I said that all the Zilla eggs were gone, as these things tend to go - but let's not kid ourselves - all the best Godzilla endings are cliffhangers, even (or especially) if it doesn't have a sequel. However, I will tell you that I _might_ make a prequel detailing what happened between HEAT and the Tachyon aliens. It wouldn't be for quite some time - in fact, it would probably be over a year - and I'd probably only start on it once I had utterly run out of story ideas. But still, the concept's there. And in the meantime, you can check out some of my other in-progress stories if they're to your liking.

All right, so be honest here: How many of you did I manage to fool with that whole "Godzilla is dead" thing? I'm hoping it was quite a few of you, because I wanted to make all the sadness and whatnot as convincing as possible. I actually came up with the Spiral Nuclear Pulse (speaking of which, did you like that attack?) destroying all the Zillas at once pretty early in the story, but that was about it. I once considered ending the battle with Godzilla using the Spiral Ray, Gamera using the Mana Ray, and Junior using his breath all at once and just nuking them all, but that presented a host of other problems (among them, Junior's lack of some epic finishing attack causing him to look pathetically weak and even useless compared to the other two). And even then, I didn't really know what would happen after Godzilla used it, other than the Zillas dying, but I figured that him whipping out his super-awesome-mega-death-explosion and then just getting up and walking away would be pretty cheap; even though he survived after all, the fact that he very nearly spent all his energy on that last attack. So, I hope that was convincing.

Also, I know that a lot of you had a bunch of ideas about there being some kind of Zilla leader or maybe all the Zillas combining themselves into one big giant Zilla. But think about it for a moment; if I had any intention of them having a pack leader, that's a concept I would have introduced well before now. Waiting until the last chapter would have just made it look random. Besides, that would kind of go against the point - it's supposed to be a big army of Zillas, individually weak, but deadly in large numbers. Shifting the focus over to any kind of single entity for that would have gone against all I've been working at. Moreover, the Zillas, despite being kaiju, are meant to follow in the footsteps of GINO by being little more than giant animals, without any "powers" to speak of apart from all the laws-of-physics-bending required for a kaiju to exist in the first place (even their fire breath wouldn't be difficult to explain away on a biological basis); having them magically combine into a single giant creature would not only have come out of nowhere, but in fact it wouldn't even make any internal _sense_, and that's coming from a story where hundreds of giant lizards simultaneously invade Tokyo and are fought off by three other monsters accompanied by a small group of humans who arrived in two separate futuristic submarine-spaceships. So there.

Wow. This is really it. It's finally over. I've been working on this story for over a year; the idea of me just not having to write another chapter for it is gonna take some getting used to. I'd like to thank all my reviews for giving me the motivation to go on (in order of first review): **gojiramatthew**, **DragonMaster02**, **CII**, **feebasfactor**, **Zillah 91**, **Darkrave**, **Raptor Llama**, **ZillaPWNS**, **Son Kenshin**, **Harley Dirk**, **Dr Facer/Fabian Cruz**, **Zillaalien**, **lord maul160**, **edd 2.**, **jason browne**, **Godzilla89**, **Kendell**, **Scott**, **Infinite Freedom**, **ProudZillaFan**, **John Newton 22**, **PhinalPhantasy**, **Pikazilla**, **julz**, **Kardas the Destroyer**, **Matthew Mcdaniels**, **Bulldan**, **jcogginsa**, **Me**, **Russel**, **kenny**, **Mire-Goji**, **godzillamegafan**, **Eggnik**, **Killa Jr.76**, **eric**, **Troycool**, and **megaman20XX**. Thanks, you guys, and thanks in advance to anyone who will review this story in the future, in which case I obviously couldn't put your name in there. But you're just as appreciated.

So, please review, and I hope this chapter was worthy. It's been a great ride.


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